Full text of "Capital; a critique of political economy"

See other formats

CAPITAL

A CEITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

BY KARL MAEX

VOLUME I

THE PROCESS OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION

TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION, B7
SAMUEL MOORE AND EDWARD AVELINO

AND EDITED BY

FREDERICK ENGELS

REVISED AND AMPLIFIED ACCORDING TO THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION
BY ERNEST UNTEBMANN

CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPAJSTY

1926

HB-

So/

. /

CONTENTS.

FAGX

EDITOR'S Nors TO TH* FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, ......... ?

AUTHOR'S PREFACES — I. To the First Edition ........... 11

II. To the Second Edition ........... 10

EDITOR'S PREFACE— To the First English Translation, ........ 27

EDITOR'S PREFACE — To the Fourth German Edition, ......... 32

PART I.

COMMODITIES AND MONEY.

CHAPTER I. — Commodities .................. 41

Section 1. — The two Factors of a Commodity; Use Value and Value (the

Substance of Value and the Magnitude of Value) ........ 41

Section 2. — The Twofold Character of the Labour embodied in Commodities, 48

Section 3. — The Form of Value, or Exchange Value, ........ 54

A. Elementary or Accidental Form o." Value, ......... 56

1. The two Poles of the Expression of Value: Relative Form and

Equivalent Form, ............... 56

The Relative Form of Value, ............ 57

(o.) The Nature and Import of this Form, ....... 67

(&.) Quantitative Determination of Relative Value ...... 61

3. The Equivalent Form of Value, ........... 64

4. The Elementary Form of Value considered as a Whole, ... 69

B. Total or Expanded Form of Value, ........... 72

1. The Expanded Relative Form of Value, ........ 72

2. The Particular Equivalent Form, .......... 73

3. Defects of the Total or Expanded Form of Value ...... 74

C. The General Form of Value, ............. 75

1. The altered Character of the Form of Valu .......... 75

1. The interdependent Development of the Relative Form of Value,

and of the Equivalent Form ............. 78

3. Transition from the General Form to the Money Form, .... 79

D. The Money Form .................. 80

Section 4.— The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof ...... 81

/ CHAPTER II.— Exchange ................. 96

CHAPTER 111.— Money, or the Circulation of Commodities ...... . . 106

Section 1.— The Measure of Value ............... 106

Section 2.— The Medium of Circulation ............. 116

a. The Metamorphosis of Commodities ......... 116

i. The Currency of Money ............. 128

t. Coin, and Symbols of Value, ........... 140

Section 8.— Money, ................... 146

a. Hoarding ................. 146

*. Means of Payment, .... ........... 151

€, Universal Money ............... 159

PART II.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL.

CHAPTER IV.— The General Formula for Capital ........... j/W

CHAPTER V.— Contradictions in the General Formula of Capital,
C« AFTER VI.— The Buying and Selling of LabourrPower

4 Contents.

PART III.

THB PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPLUS-VALUE.

PAG»

/CHAPTER VII. — The Labour Process and the Process of producing Surplus-
Value,

Section 1. — The Labour Process or the Production of Use- Value, 197

< Section 2. — The Production of Surplus- Value, 207

CHAPTER VIII.— Constant Capital and Variable Capital 221

CHAPTER IX.— The Rate of Surplus- Value, ..235

Section 1. — The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power, 235

Section 2. — The Representation of the Components of the Value of the Pro
duct by corresponding proportional Parts of the Product itself, . . . ,2_44_

Section 3. — Senior's " Last Hour," 248

Section 4.— Surplus-Produce 254

CHAPTER X.— The Working-Day, 255

Section 1.— The Limits of the Working-Day, 255

Section 2. — The Greed for Surplus-Labour. Manufacturer and Boyard, .. . 259
Section 3. — Branches of English Industry without Legal Limits to Exploitation, 268

Section 4.— Day and Night Work. The Relay System 282

Section 5. — The Struggle for a Normal Working- Day. Compulsory Laws for
the Extension of the Working-Day from the Middle of the 14th to the

End of the 17th Century 290

Section 6. — The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Limitation

by Law of the Working-Time. The English Factory Acts, 1833 to 1864, 304
Section 7. — The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Re-action of the Eng
lish Factory Acts on Other Countries, 326

CHAPTER XI. — Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value, . , _331

PART IV.

PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS- VALU*.

CHAPTER XII. — The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value 842

CHAPTER XIII.-— Co-Operation, 358

CHAPTER XIV. — Division of Labour and Manufacture, 368

Section 1. — Twofold Origin of Manufacture, 368

Section 2. — The Detail Labourer and his Implements 372

Section 3. — The two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture: Heterogeneous

Manufacture, Serial Manufacture, 375

Section 4. — Division of Labour in Manufacture, and Division of Labour in

Society 385

Section 5.— The Capitalistic Character of Manufacture, 895

CHAPTER XV. — Machinery and Modern Industry, 405

Section 1.— The Development of Machinery 405

Section 2. — The Value transferred by Machinery to the Product 422

Section 3. — The Proximate Effects of Machinery on the Workman, . . . . 430
a. Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-Power by Capital. The

Employment of Women and Children, 481

&. Prolongation of the Working-Day, 440

c. Intensification of Labour, 447

Section 4. — The Factory, 457

Section 5. — The Strife between Workman and Machinery, 466

Section 6. — The Theory of Compensation as regards thr Workpeople displaced

by Machinery „ . ... ~. 478

Section 7. — RejraJsiou and Attraction of Workpeople by the Factory

Crises of the Cotton Trade

Contents. 5

PACK

Section 8. — Revolution effected in Manufacture, Handicrafts, and Domestic

Industry by Modern Industry 502

a. Overthrow of Co-Operation based on Handicraft and on Divi

sion of Labour, 502

b. Re-action of the Factory System on Manufacture and Domes

tic Industries, 504

e. Modern Manufacture, 506

d. Modern Domestic Industry, 509

e. Passage of Modern Manufacture and Domestic Industry into

Modern Mechanical Industry. The Hastening of this Revo
lution by the Application of the Factory Acts to those In
dustries, 514

Section 9. — The Factory Acts. Sanitary and Educational Clauses of the same.
> Their general Extension in England, 526

Section 10. — Modern Industry and Agriculture 653

PART V.

THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE.

CHAPTER XVI.— Absolute and Relative Surplus- Value, 657

CHAPTER XVII. — Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-Power and in

Surplus-Value 668

L Length of the Working Day and Intensity of Labour constant. Pro
ductiveness of Labour variable 56«

II. Working Day constant. Productiveness of Labour constant. Intensity

of Labor variable, 574

III. Productiveness and Intensity of Labour constant. Length of the Work
ing Day variable, 576

IV. Simultaneous Variations in the Duration, Productiveness and In
tensity of Labour, 678

(1.) Diminishing Productiveness of Labour with a simultaneous Length
ening of the Working Day 578

(2.) Increasing Intensity and Productiveness of Labour with simul
taneous Shortening of the Working Day, 680

CHAPTER XVIIL— Various Formlae for the Rate of Surplus- Value 682

PART VI.

WAGES.

CHAPTER XIX.— The Transformation of the Value (and respectively the Price)

of Labour-Power into Wages, 686

CHAPTER XX. — Time-wages, 594

CHAPTER XXL— Piece-Wages, 602

CHAPTER XXII. — National Differences of Wages, 611

PART VII.

THE ACCUMULATION O? CAPITAL,

CHAPTER XXIII. — Simple Reproduction 619

CHAPTER XXIV. — Conversion of Surplus- Value into Capital 634

Section 1. — Capitalist Production on a progressively increasing Scale. Transi
tion of the Laws of Property that characterise Production of Com
modities into Laws of Capitalist Appropriation, 634

Section 2. — Erroneous Conception, by Political Economy, of Reproduction on

a progressively increasing Scale 044

5 Contents.

V*4X

Section 3.— Separation of Surplus-Value into Capital and Revenue. The Ab
stinence Theory •

Section 4.— Circumstances that, independently of the proportional Division of
Surplus-Value into Capital and Revenue, determine the Amount of Ac
cumulation. Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power. Productivity of
Labour. Growing Difference in Amount between Capital employed and
Capital consumed. Magnitude of Capital advanced 656

Section 5. — The so-called Labour Fund, • 667

CHAPTER XXV. — The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation 671

Section 1. — The increased Demand for Labour-Power that accompanies Accumu
lation, the Composition of Capital remaining the same 671

Section 2.— Relative Diminution of the Variable Part of Capital simultaneously
with the Progress of Accumulation and of the Concentration that ac
companies it, 681

Section 3. — Progressive Production of a Relative Surplus-Population, or Indus
trial Reserve Army ,. 689

Section 4.— Different Forms of the Relative Surplus-Population. 'The General

Law of Capitalistic Accumulation, 70S

Section 6. — Illustrations of the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, . .711

a. England from 1846 to 1866, 711

b. The badly paid Strata of the British Industrial Class, . . .718

c. The Nomad Population 728

d. Effect of Crises on the best paid Part of the Working Class, . 733

*. The British Agricultural Proletariat, 739

f. Ireland 767

PART VIII.

TUB SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION.

CHAPTER XXVI. — The Secret of Primitive Accumulation 784

CHAPTER XXVII. — Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land, .J-IST
CHAPTER XXVIII. — Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated from the End

of the 15th Century. Forcing down of Wages by Acts of Parliament, . 805

CHAPTER XXIX.— Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer, 814

CHAPTER XXX. — Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. Creal

tion of the Home Market for Industrial Capital, 817

CHAPTER XXXI. — Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist, 8i&

CHAPTER XXXIL— Historical Tendency of Capitalistic Accumulation, . . .834)^,
CHAPTER XXXIII.— The Modern Theory of Colonization 838 \

Works and Authors quoted in " Capital," 850

Index . 866

EDITOR'S NOTE TO THE FIRST AMERICAN
EDITION.

The original plan of Marx, as outlined in his preface to
the first German edition of Capital, in 1867, was to divide
his work into three volumes. Volume I was to contain Book
I, The Process of 'Capitalist Production. Volume II was
scheduled to comprise both Book II, The Process of Capi
talist Circulation, and Book III, The Process of Capitalist
Production as a Whole. The work was to close with volume
III, containing Book IV, A History of Theories of Surplus-
Value.

When Marx proceeded to elaborate his work for publica
tion, he had the essential portions of all three volumes, with
a few exceptions, worked out in their main analyses and con
clusions, but in a very loose and unfinished form. Owing to
ill health, he completed only volume I. He died on March
14, 1883, just when a third German edition of this volume
was being prepared for the printer.

Frederick Engels, the intimate friend and co-operator of
Marx, stepped into the place of his dead comrade and pro
ceeded to complete the work. In the course of the elabora
tion of volume II it was found that it would be wholly taken
up with Book II, The Process of Capitalist Circulation. Its
first German edition did not appear until May, 1885, almost
18 years after the first volume.

The publication of the third volume was delayed still
longer. When the second German edition of volume II ap
peared, in July, 1893, Engels was still working on volume

8 'American Editor's Note.

III. It was not until October, 1894, that the first German
edition of volume III was published, in two separate parts,
containing the subject matter of what had been originally
planned as Book III of volume II, and treating of The Capi
talist Process of Production as a whole.

The reasons for the delay in the publication of volumes II
and III, and the difficulties encountered in solving the
problem of elaborating the copious notes of Marx into a fin
ished and connected presentation of his theories, have been
fully explained by Engels in his various prefaces to these two
volumes. His great modesty led him td belittle his own
share in this fundamental work. As a matter of fact, a large
portion of the contents of Capital is as much a creation of
Engels as though he had written it independently of Marx.

Engels intended to issue the contents of the manuscripts
for Book IV, originally planned as volume III, in the form
of a fourth volume of Capital. But on the 6th of August,
1895, less than one year after the publication of volume III,
he followed his co-worker into the grave, still leaving this
work incompleted.

However, some years previous to his demise, and in antici
pation of such an eventuality, he had appointed Karl Kautsky,
the editor of Die Neue Zeii, the scientific organ of the German
Socialist Party, as his successor and familiarized him per
sonally with the subject matter intended for volume IY of
this work. The material proved to be so voluminous, that
Kautsky, instead of making a fourth volume of Capital out
of it, abandoned the original plan and issued his elaboration
as a separate work in three volumes under the title Theories of
Surplus-value.

The first English translation of the first volume of Capital
was edited by Engels and published in 1886. Marx had in
the meantime made some changes in the text of the second

American Editor's Note. 9

German edition and of the French translation, both of which
appeared in 1873, and he had intended to superintend per
sonally the edition of an English version. But the state of
his health interfered with this plan. Engels utilised his
notes and the text of the French edition of 1873 in the prep
aration of a third German edition, and this served as a basis
for the first edition of the English translation.

Owing to the fact that the title page of this English trans
lation (published by Swan Sonnenschein & 'Co.) did not dis
tinctly specify that this was but volume I? it has often been
mistaken for the complete work, in spite of the fact that the
prefaces of Marx and Engels clearly pointed to the actual
condition of the matter.

In 1890, four years after the publication of the first Eng
lish edition, Engels edited the proofs for a fourth German
edition of volume I and enlarged it still more after a re
peated comparison with the French edition and with manu
script notes of Marx. But the Swan Sonnenschein edition
did not adopt this new version in its subsequent English
issues.

This first American edition will be the first complete Eng
lish edition of the entire Marxian theories of Capitalist Pro
duction. It will contain all three volumes of Capital in full.
The present volume, I, deals with The Process of Capitalist
Production in the strict meaning of the term " production."
Volume II will treat of The Process of Capitalist Circulation
in the strict meaning of the term " circulation." Volume
III will contain the final analysis of The Process of Capitalist
Production as a Whole, that is of Production and Circulation
in their mutual interrelations.

The Theories of Surplus-Value, Kautsky's elaboration of
the posthumous notes of Marx and Engels, will in due time
be published in an English translation as a separate work.

1O American Editor's Note.

This first American edition of volume I is based on the
revised fourth German edition. The text of the English
version of the Swan Sonnenschein edition has been compared
page for page with this improved German edition, and about
ten pages of new text hitherto not rendered in English are
thus presented to American readers. All the footnotes have
likewise been revised and brought up to date.

For all further information concerning the technical par
ticulars of this work I refer the reader to the prefaces of Marx
and Engels.

EENEST UNTEEMANN.

Orlando, Fla., July 18, 1906.

AUTHOR'S PREFACES.

I. TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THE work, the first volume of which I now submit to the
public, forms the continuation of my "Zur Kritik der
Politischen Oekonomie" (A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy) published in 1859. The long pause be
tween the first part and the continuation is due to an illness
of many years' duration that again and again interrupted my
work.

The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the
first three chapters of this volume. This is done not merely
for the sake of connection and completeness. The presentation
of the subject-matter is improved. As far as circumstances in
any way permit, many points only hinted at in the earlier
book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points
worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volume.
The sections on the history of the theories of value and of
money are now, of course, left out altogether The reader
of the earlier work will find, however, in the notes to the first
chapter additional sources of reference relative to the history
of those theories.

Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To
understand the first chapter, especially the section that con
tains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the
greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the
analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of valno,

12 Author's Prefaces.

I have, as much as it was possible, popularised.1 The value-
form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very
elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has
for more than 2000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom
of it, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of
much more composite and complex forms, there has been at
least an approximation. Why ? Because the body, as an or-
ganic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that
body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither
microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of
abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society the
commodity-form of the product of labor — or the value-form
of the commodity — is the economic cell-form. To the super
ficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon
minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of
the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.

With the exception of the section on value-form, therefor^
this volume cannot stand accused on the score of difficulty. I
pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn somo-
thing new and therefore to think for, himself.

The physicist either observes physical phenomena where
they occur in their most typical form and most free from
disturbing influence, or, wherever possible, he makes experi
ments under conditions that assure the occurrence of the phe-

i This is the more necessary, as even the section of Feidinand Lassalle't
work against Schulze-Delitzsch, in which he professed to give "the intel
lectual quintessence" of my explanations on these subjects, contains im
portant mistakes. If Ferdinand Lassalle has borrowed almost literally
from my writings, and without any acknowledgment, all the general
theoretical propositions in his economic works, e.g,, those on the his
torical character of capital, on the connection between the conditions of
production and the mode of production, &c., Ac., even to the terminology
created by me, this may perhaps be due to purposes of propaganda. I
am here, of course, not speaking of his detailed working out and applica
tion of these propositions, with which I have nothing to do.

Autlwr's Prefaces. 13

nomenon in its normality. In this work I have to examine
the capitalist mode of production, and the conditions of pro
duction and exchange corresponding to that mode. Up to the
present time, their classic ground is England. That is the
reason why England is used as the chief illustration in the
development of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the Ger
man reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the Eng
lish industrial and agricultural laborers, or in optimist fash
ion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things
are not nearly so bad, I must plainly tell him, "De te fabvla
narratur! "

Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower
degree of development of the social antagonisms that result
from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a ques
tion of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with
iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that
is more developed industrially only shows, to the less de
veloped, the image of its own future.

But apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully
naturalised among the Germans (for instance, in the factories
proper) the condition of things is much worse than in England,
because the counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In
all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Western
Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist
production, but also from the incompleteness of that develop
ment Alongside of modern evils, a whole series of inherited
evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of anti
quated modes of production, with their inevitable train of
social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the
living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif!

The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental
Western Europe are, in comparison with those of England,
wretchedly compiled. But they raise the veil just enough

14 Author's Prefaces.

to let us catch a glimpse of the Medusa head behind it. We
should be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as in
England, our governments and parliaments appointed period
ically commissions of enquiry into economic conditions; if
these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers
to get at the truth ; if it was possible to find for this purpose
men as competent, as free from partisanship and respect of
persons as are the English factory-inspectors, her medical re
porters on public health, her commissioners of enquiry into
the exploitation of women and children, into housing and
food. Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted
down might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over
eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.
LeTus not deceive ourselves on this. As in the 18th century,
the American war of independence sounded the tocsin for the
European middle-class, so in the 19th century, the American
civil war sounded it for the European working-class. In Eng
land the progress of social disintegration is palpable. When
it has reached a certain point, it must re-act on the continent.
There it will take a form more brutal or more humane, accord
ing to the degree of development of the working-class itself.
Apart from higher motives, therefore, their own most impor
tant interests dictate to the classes that are for the nonce the
ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable hindrances
to the free development of the working-class. For this reason,
as well as others, I have given so large a space in this volume
to the history, the details, and the results of English factory
legislation. One nation can and should learn from others.
And even when a society has got upon the right track for the
discovery of the natural laws of its movement— and it is the
ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of
motion of modern society — it can neither clear by bold leaps,
nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the

Author's Prefaces. 15

successive phases of its normal development But it can
shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.

To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the
capitalist and the landlord in no sense covleiur de rose. But
here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the
personifications of economic categories, embodiments of par
ticular class-relations and class-interests. My stand-point,
from which the evolution of the economic formation of society
is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any
other make the individual responsible for relations whose crea
ture he socially remains, however much he may subjectively
raise himself above them.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific enquiry
meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains.
The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as
foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malig
nant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private in
terest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more
readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on fa
of its income. Now-a-days atheism itself is culpa levis, as
compared with criticism of existing property relations. Never
theless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer, e.g., to the
bluvbook published within the last few weeks : " Correspond
ence with Her Majesty's Missions Abroad, regarding Indus
trial Questions and Trades' Unions." The representatives of
the English Crown in foreign countries' there declare in so
many words that in Germany, in France, to be brief, in all
the civilised states of the European continent, a radical change
in the existing relations between capital and labor is as
evident and inevitable as in England. At the same time, on
the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-president
of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after
the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations ol

1 6 Author's Prefaces.

capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the
day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple
mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that to-morrow
a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling-
classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present
society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change,
and is constantly changing.

The second volume of this work will treat of the process of
the circulation of capital1 (Book II.), and of the varied forms
assumed by capital in the course of its development (Book
III.), the third and last volume (Book IV.), the history of
the theory.

Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As
to the prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have
never made concessions, now as aforetime the maxim of the
great Florentine is mine:

"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti."

KARL MARX.
LONDON, July 25, 1867.

II. TO THE SECOND EDITION.

To the present moment Political Economy, in Germany, is
a foreign science. Gustav von Giilich in his "Historical de
scription of Commerce, Industry," &c.,2 especially in the two
first volumes published in 1830, has examined at length the
historical circumstances that prevented, in Germany, the de
velopment of the capitalist mode of production, and conse
quently the development, in that country, of modern bourgeois
society. Thus the soil whence Political Economy springs was

*On p. 618 the author explains what he comprise* under this head.
2 Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Acker-
baus, &c., von Gustav von Gtilich. 5 vols., Jena, 1830-45.

Author's Prefaces. 17

wanting. This "science" had to be imported from England
and France as a ready-made article; its German professors
remained schoolboys. The theoretical expression of a foreign
reality was turned, in their hands, into a collection of dogmas,
interpreted by them in terms of the petty trading world around
them, and therefore misinterpreted. The feeling of scientific
impotence, a feeling *iot wholly to be repressed, and the uneasy
consciousness of haviag to touch a subject in reality foreign to
them, was but imperfectly concealed, either under a parade
of literary and historical erudition, or by an admixture of
extraneous material, borrowed from the so-called "Kameral"
sciences, a medley of smatterings, through whose purgatory
the hopeless candidate for the German bureaucracy has to pass.

Since 1848 capitalist production has developed rapidly in
Germany, and at the present time it is in the full bloom of
speculation find swindling. But fate is still unpropitious to
our professional economists. At the time when they were
able to deal with Political Economy in a straightforward
fashion, modern economic conditions did not actually exist
in Germany. And as soon as these conditions did come into
existence, they did so under circumstances that no longer al
lowed of their being really and impartially investigated within
the bounds of the bourgeois horizon. In so far as Political
Economy remains within that horizon, in so far, i.e., as the
capitalist regime is looked upon as the absolutely^ final form
of social production, instead of^asj^ passing historical phase
of its evolution, Political Economy can remain a science only
so long as the class-stniggle is latent or manifests itself only
in isolated and sporadic phenomena.

Let us take England. Its political economy belongs to the
period in which the class-struggle was as yet undeveloped.
Its last great representative, Ricardo, in the end, consciously
makes the antagonism of class-interests, of wages and profits,

i8 Author's Prefaces.

<af profits and rent, the starting-point of his investigations,
naively taking this antagonism for a social law of nature.
But by this start the science of bourgeois economy had reached
the limits beyond which it could not pass. Already in the life
time of Ricardo, and in opposition to him, it was met by criti
cism, in the person of Sismondi.1

The succeeding period, from 1820 to 1830, was notable in
England for scientific activity in the domain of Political
Economy. It was the time as well of the vulgarising and
extending of Ricardo's theory, as of the contest of that theory
with the old school. Splendid tournaments were held. What
was done then, is little known to the Continent generally, be
cause the polemic is for the most part scattered through articles
in reviews, occasional literature and pamphlets. The un
prejudiced character of this polemic — although the theory of
Ricardo already serves, in exceptional cases, as a weapon of
attack upon bourgeois economy — is explained by the circum
stances of the time. On the one hand, modern industry itself
was only just emerging from the age of childhood, as is shown
by the fact that with the crisis of 1825 it for the first time
opens the periodic cycle of its modern life. On the other
hand, the class-struggle between capital and labor is forced
into the background, politically by the discord between the
governments and the feudal aristocracy gathered around the
Holy Alliance on the one hand, and the popular masses, led
by the bourgeoisie on the other; economically by the quarrel
between industrial capital and aristocratic landed property — a
quarrel that in France was concealed by the opposition between
small and large landed property, and that in England broke
out openly after the Corn Laws. The literature of Political
Economy in England at this time calls to mind the stormy
forward movement in France after Dr. Quesnay's death, but
i See my work "Critique, &c.," p. 70.

Author's Prefaces. 19

only as a Saint Martin's summer reminds us of spring. With
the year 1830 came the decisive crisis.

In France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered
political power. Thenceforth, the class-struggle, practically
as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspoken and
threatening forms. It sounded the knell of scientific bour
geois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question,
whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was
useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, polit
ically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested enquirers,
there were hired prize-fighters; in place of genuine scientific
research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic.
Still, even the obtrusive pamphlets with which the Anti-Corn
Law League, led by the manufacturers Cobden and Bright,
deluged the world, have a historic interest, if no scientific one,
on account of their polemic against the landed aristocracy.
But since then the Free Trade legislation, inaugurated by
Sir Robert Peel, has deprived vulgar economy of this its last
sting.

The Continental revolution of 1848-9 also had its reaction
in England. Men who still claimed some scientific standing
and aspired to be something more than mere sophists and syco
phants of the ruling-classes, tried to harmonise the Political
Economy of capital with the claims, no longer to be ignored,
of the proletariat Hence a shallow syncretism, of which
John Stuart Mill is the best representative. It is a declaration
of bankruptcy by bourgeois economy, an event on which the
great Russian scholar and critic, N. Tschernyschewsky, has
thrown the light of a master mind in his "Outlines of Political
Economy according to Mill."

In Germany, therefore, the capitalist mode of production
came to a head, after its antagonistic character had already,
in France and England, shown itself in a fierce strife of

2O Author's Prefaces.

classes. And meanwhile, moreover, the German proletariat
had attained a much more clear class-consciousness than the
German bourgeoisie. Thus, at the very moment when a bour
geois science of political economy seemed at last possible in
Germany, it had in reality again become impossible.

Under these circumstances its professors fell into two groups.
The one set> prudent, practical business folk, flocked to the
banner of Bastiat, the most superficial and therefore the most
adequate representative of the apologetic of vulgar economy;
the other, proud of the professorial dignity of their science,
followed John Stuart Mill in his attempt to reconcile irrecon-
eilables. Just as in the classical time of bourgeois economy,
so also in the time of its decline, the Germans remained mere
schoolboys, imitators and followers, petty retailers and hawk
ers in the service of the great foreign wholesale concern.

The peculiar historic development of German society there
fore forbids, in that country, all original work in bourgeois
economy; but not the criticism of that economy. So far as
such criticism represents a class, it can only represent the class
whose vocation in history is the overthrow of the capitalist
mode of production and the final abolition of all classes — the
proletariat.

The learned and unlearned spokesmen of the German bour
geoisie tried at first to kill "Das Kapital" by silence, as they
had managed to do with my earlier writings. As soon as they
found that these tactics no longer fitted in with the conditions
of the time, they wrote, under pretence of criticising my book,
prescriptions "for the tranquillisation of the bourgeois mind."
But they found in the workers' press — see, e.g., Joseph Dietz-
gen's articles in the "Volksstaat" — antagonists stronger than
themselves, to whom (down to this very day) they owe a
reply.1
iThe mealy-mouthed babblers of German vulgar economy fell /oul of

Author's Prefaces. 21

An excellent Russian translation of "Das Kapital" appeared
in the spring of 1872. The edition of 3000 copies is already
nearly exhausted. As early as 1871, A. Sieber, Professor of
Political Economy in the University of Kiev, in his work
"David Ricardo's Theory of Value and of Capital," referred
to my theory of value, of money and of capital, as in its
fundamentals a necessary sequel to the teaching of Smith and
Ricardo. That which astonishes the Western European in
the reading of this excellent work, is the author's consistent
and firm grasp of the purely theoretical position.

That the method employed in "Das Kapital" has been little
understood, is shown by the various conceptions, contradictory
one to another, that have been formed of it.

Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on
the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the
other hand — imagine! — confine myself to the mere critical
analysis of actual facts, instead of writing recipes (Comtist
ones ?) for the cook-shops of the future. In answer to the
reproach in re metaphysics, Professor Sieber has it: "In so
far as it deals with actual theory, the method of Marx is the
deductive method of the whole English school, a school whose
failings and virtues are common to the best theoretic econ-

the style of my book. No one can feel the literary shortcomings in "Das
Kapital" more strongly than I myself. Yet I will for the benefit and
the enjoyment of these gentlemen and their public quote in this connec
tion one English and one Russian notice. The "Saturday Review," al
ways hostile to my views, said in its notice of the first edition: "The
presentation of the subject invests the driest economic questions with a
certain peculiar charm/' The "St. Petersburg Journal" ( Sankt-Peter-
burgskie Viedomosti ) , in its issue of April 20, 1872, says : "The presen
tation of the subject, with the exception of one or two exceptionally spe
cial parts, is distinguished by its comprehensibility by the general reader,
its clearness, and in spite of the scientific intricacy of the subject, by an
unusual liveliness. In this respect the author in no way resembles
. . . the majority of German scholars who . . . write their books
in a language so dry and obscure that the heads of ordinary mortals are
cocked tjy it."

22 Author's Prefaces.

omists." M. Block — "Les theoriciens du socialisme en Alle-
magne, Extrait du Journal des Economistes, Juillet et Aout
1872" — makes the discovery that my method is analytic and
says: "Par cet ouvrage M. Marx se classe panni les esprits
analytiques les plus eminents." German reviews, of course,
shriek out at "Hegelian sophistics." The European Messenger
of St. Petersburg, in an article dealing exclusively with the
method of "Das Kapital" (May number, 1872, pp. 427-436),
finds my method of inquiry severely realistic, but my method
of presentation, unfortunately, German-dialectical. It says:
"At first sight, if the judgment is based on the external form
of the presentation of the subject, Marx is the most ideal of
ideal philosophers, always in the German, i.e., the bad sense
of the word. But in point of fact he is infinitely more realis
tic than all his fore-runners in the work of economic criticism.
He can in no sense be called an idealist" I cannot answer
the writer better than by aid of a few extracts from his own
criticism, which may interest some of my readers to whom
the Russian original is inaccessible.

After a quotation from the preface to my "Critique of
Political Economy," Berlin, 1859, pp. 11-13, where I discuss
the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:
"The one thing which is of moment to Marx is to find the law
of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned;
and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs
these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and
mutual connection within a given historical period. Of still
greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their
development, i.e., of their transition from one form into
another, from one series of connections into a different one.
This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects
in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx
only troubles himself about one thing ; to show, by rigid

Author's Prefaces. 23

tific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate
orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as
possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting
points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same
time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and
the necessity of another order into which the first must
jneyjtably pass overj__and JhJ8jdl_thj9 . saj

believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or un
conscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process
of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of
human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the
contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence.
... If in the history of civilisation the conscious element
plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical
inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than
anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of,
consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the
material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point.
Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and
the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another
fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both
facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they
actually form, each with respect to the other, different mo
menta of an evolution ; but most important of all is the rigid
analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and
concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolu
tion present themselves. But it will be sajd^ jthe^eneral laws
of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether
they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly
denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist.
On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has
laws of its own. ... As soon as society has outlived a given
period of development, and is passing over from one given

24 Author's Prefaces.

stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws.
In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous
to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The
old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws
when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry.
A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social
organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants
or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under
quite different laws in consequence of the different structure
of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their
individual organs, of the different conditions in which those
organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of
population is the same at all times and in all places. He
asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has
its own law of population. . . . With the varying degree of
development of productive power, social conditions and the
laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the
task of following and explaining from this point of view the
economic system established by the sway of capital, he is
only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that
every accurate investigation into economic life must have.
The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing
of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, develop
ment, and death a given social organism and its replacement
by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point
of fact, Marx's book has."

Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my
method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own
application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but
the dialectic method?

Of course the method of presentation must differ in form
from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the ma
terial in detail, to analyse its different forms of development,

Author's Prefaces. 2$

to trace out their inner connection. Only after this work is
done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If
this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is
ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had
before us a mere a priori construction.

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegel
ian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of
the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under
the name of "the Idea," he even transforms into an inde
pendent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the
real world is only the external, phenomenal form of "the
Idea." With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else
than the material world reflected by the human mind, and
translated into forms of thought

The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly
thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But
just as I was working at the first volume of "Das Kapital,"
it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre
Eirtyovoiwho now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat
Hegel in the same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in
Lessing's time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a "dead dog." I there
fore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker,
and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value,
coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The
mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no
means prevents him from being the first to present its general
form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner.
With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right
side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within
the mystical shell.

In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Ger
many, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the
existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal

26 Author's Prefaces.

and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire pro
fessors, because it includes in its comprehension and af
firmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the
same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state,
of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every his
torically developed social form as in fluid movement, and
therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than
its momentary existence ; because it lets nothing impose upon
it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist
society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most
strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which
modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the uni
versal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although
as yet but in its preliminary stage ; and by the universality of
its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics
even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy
Prusso-German empire.

KARL MARX.

LONDON, January 24, 1873.

EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH
TRANSLATION.

publication of an English version of "Das Kapital"
needs no apology. On the contrary, an explanation
might be expected why this English version has been delayed
until now, seeing that for some years past the theories advo
cated in this book have been constantly referred to, attacked
and defended, interpreted and mis-interpreted, in the period
ical press and the current literature of both England and
America.

When, soon after the author's death in 1883, it became
evident that an English edition of the work was really re
quired, Mr. Samuel Moore, for many years a friend of Marx
and of the present writer, and than whom, perhaps, no one
is more conversant with the book itself, consented to undertake
the translation which the literary executors of Marx were
anxious to lay before the public. It was understood that I
should compare the MS. with the original work, and suggest
such alterations as I might deem advisable. When, by and
by, it was found that Mr. Moore's professional occupations
prevented him from finishing the translation as quickly as
we all desired, we gladly accepted Dr. Aveling's offer to
undertake a portion of the work; at the same time Mrs.
Aveling, Marx's youngest daughter, offered to check the
quotations and to restore the original text of the numerous
passages taken from English authors and Bluebooks and trans
lated by Marx into German. This has been done throughout,
with but a few unavoidable exceptions.

28 Editor's Preface.

The following portions of the book have been translated by
Dr. Aveling: (1) Chapters X. (The Working Day), and
XL (Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value ); (2) Part VI.
(Wages, comprising Chapters XIX. to XXII.) ; (3) from
Chapter XXI V, Section 4 (Circumstances that £c.) to the
end of the book, comprising the latter part of Chapter XXIV.,
Chapter XXV.; and the whole of Part VIII. (Chapters
XXVI. to XXXIII.); (4) the two Author's prefaces. All
the rest of the book has been done by Mr. Moore. While,
thus, each of the translators is responsible for his share of the
work only, I bear a joint responsibility for the whole.

The third German edition, which has been made the basis
of our work throughout, was prepared by me, in 1883, with
the assistance of notes left by the author, indicating the
passages of the second edition to be replaced by designated
passages, from the French text published in 1873.1 The alter
ations thus effected in the text of the second edition generally
coincided with changes prescribed by Marx in a set of MS.
instructions for an English translation that was planned,
about ten years ago, in America, but abandoned chiefly for
want of a fit and proper translator. This MS. was placed
at our disposal by our old friend Mr. F. A. Sorge of Hoboken
N.J. It designates some further interpolations from the
French edition ; but> being so many years older than the final
instructions for the third edition, I did not consider myself
at liberty to make use of it otherwise than sparingly, and
chiefly in cases where it helped us over difficulties. In the
same way, the French text has been referred to in most of
the difficult passages, as an indicator of what the author him
self was prepared to sacrifice wherever something of the full

i'"Le Capital," par Karl Marx. Traduction de M. J. Roy, entiere-
ment revisee par 1'auteur. Paris. Lachatre." This translation, especially
in the latter part of the book, contains considerable alterations in and
additions to the text of the second German edition.

Editor's Preface. 29

import of the original had to be sacrificed in the rendering.
There is, however, one difficulty we could not spare the
reader : the use of certain terms in a sense different from what
they have, not only in common life, but in ordinary political
economy. But this was unavoidable. Every new aspect of
a science involves a revolution in the technical terms of that
science. This is best shown by chemistry, where the whole
of the terminology is radically changed about once in twenty
years, and where you will hardly find a single organic com
pound that has not gone through a whole series of different
names. Political Economy has generally been content to take,
just as they were, the terms of commercial and industrial life,
and to operate with them, entirely failing to see that by so
doing, it confined itself within the narrow circle of ideas ex
pressed by those terms. Thus, though perfectly aware that
both profits and rent are but sub-divisions, fragments of that
unpaid part of the product which the laborer has to supply
to his employer (its first appropriator, though not its ultimate
exclusive owner), yet even classical Political Economy never
went beyond the received notions of profits and rent, never ex
amined this unpaid part of the product (called by Marx sur
plus-product) 1m its integrity as a whole, and -therefore never
arrived at a clear comprehension, either of it: origin and
nature, or of the laws that regulate the subsequent distribution
of its value. Similarly all industry, not agricultural or
handicraft, is indiscriminately comprised in the term of manu
facture, and thereby the distinction is obliterated between
two great and essentially different periods of economic history:
the period of manufacture proper, based on the division of
manual labor, and the period of modern industry based or,
machinery. It is, however, self-evident that a theory which
views modern capitalist production as a mere passing stage in
the economic lastoty of mankind, must make use of terms

3o Editor's Preface.

different from those habitual to writers who look upon that
form of production as* imperishable and final.

A word respecting the author's method of quoting may not
be out of place. In the majority of cases, the quotations serve,
in the usual way, as documentary evidence in support of
assertions made in the text. But in many instances, passages
from economic writers are quoted in order to indicate when,
where, and by whom a certain proposition was for the first
time clearly enunciated. This is done in cases where the
proposition quoted is of importance as being a more or less
adequate expression of the conditions of social production
and exchange prevalent at the time, and quite irrespective
of Marx's recognition, or otherwise, of its general validity.
These quotations, therefore, supplement the text by a running
commentary taken from the history of the science.

Our translation comprises the first book of the work only.
But this first book is in a great measure a whole in itself,
and has for twenty years ranked as an independent work.
The second book, edited in German by me, in 1885, is de
cidedly incomplete without the third, which cannot be pub
lished before the end of 1887. When Book III. has been
brought out in the original German, it will then be soon
enough to think about preparing an English edition of both.

"Das Kapital" is often called, on the Continent^ "the Bible
of the working class." That the conclusions arrived at in
this work are ddly more and more becoming the fundamental
principles of the great working class movement, not only in
Germany and Switzerland, but in ITrnnce, in Holland and
Belgium, in America, and even in Italy and Spain ; that every
where the working class more and more recognises, in these
conclusions, the most adequate expression of its condition and
of its aspirations, nobody acquainted with that movement will
deny. And in England, too, the theories of Marx, even at this

Editor's Preface. 31

moment, exercise a powerful influence upon the socialist move
ment which is spreading in the ranks of "cultured" people
no less than in those of the working class. But that is not
all. The time is rapidly approaching when a thorough ex
amination of England's economic position will impose itself
as an irresistible national necessity. The working of the in
dustrial system of this country, impossible without a constant
and rapid extension of production, and therefore of markets,
is coming to n dead stop. Free trade has exhausted its re
sources; even Manchester doubts this its quondam economic
gospel.1 Foreign industry, rapidly developing, stares Eng
lish production in the face everywhere, not only in protected,
but also in neutral markets, and even on this side of the
Channel. While the productive power increases in a geomet
ric, the extension of markets proceeds at best ifi an arithmetic
ratio. The decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity, over
production and crisis, ever recurrent from 1825 to 1867,
seems indeed to have run its course ; but only to land us in the
slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression.
The sighed-for period of prosperity will not come; as often
as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do
they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter
brings up afresh the great question, "what to do with the
unemployed ;" but while the number of the unemployed keeps
swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that
question ; and we can almost calculate the moment when the \
unemployed, losing patience, will take their own fate into

i At the quarterly meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce,
held this afternoon, a warm discussion took place on the subject of Free
Trade. A resolution was moved to the effect that "having waited in vain
40 years for other nations to follow the Free Trade example of England,
this Chamber thinks the time has now arrived to reconsider that posi
tion/' TTie resolution was rejected by a majority of one only, the
figures being 21 for, and 22 against. — Evening Standard, Nov. 1, 1886.

32 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition.

their own hands. Surely, at such a moment, the .jyoic_e ought
to be heard of a man whose whole theory is the result, of '_ a
life-long study of the economic history and condition of Eng
land, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least
in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable
social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and
legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly
expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a "pro-
slavery rebellion," to this peaceful and legal revolution.

FREDEKICK ENGELS.
November 5, 1886.

EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THB FOURTH GERMAN EDITION.

The fourth edition of this work required of me a revision,
which should give to the text and foot notes their final form,
so far as possible. The following brief hints will indicate
the way in which I performed this task.

After referring once more to the French edition and to the
manuscript notes of Marx, I transferred a few additional pass
ages from the French to the German text.1

I have also placed the long foot note concerning the Miine
workers, on pages 461-67, into the text, just as had already
been done in the French and English editions. Other small
changes are merely of a technical nature.

Furthermore I added a few explanatory notes, especially
in places where changed historical conditions seemed to require
it. All these additional notes are placed between brackets
and marked with my initials.2

1 These were inserted by me in the English text of the Swan Sonnen-
schein edition, and will be found on pages 539, 640-644, 687-689, and
692 of this American edition. — E. U.

2 These were ten new notes, which I inserted in the respective place? of
the Swan Sonnenschein edition. — E. U.

Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. 33

A complete revision of the numerous quotations had become
necessary, because the English edition had been published in
the mean time. Marx's youngest daughter, Eleanor, had un
dertaken the tedious task of comparing, for this edition, all
the quotations with the original works, so that the quotations
from English authors, which are the overwhelming majority,
are not retranslated from the German, but taken from the
original texts. I had to consult the English edition for this
fourth German edition. In so doing I found many small
inaccuracies. There were references to wrong pages, due
either to mistakes in copying, or to accumulated typographical
errors of three editions. There were quotation marks, or
periods indicating omissions, in wrong places, such as would
easily occur in making copious quotations from notes. Now
and then I came across a somewhat inappropriate choice of
terms made in translating. Some passages were taken from
Marx's old manuscripts written in Paris, 1843-45, when he
did not yet understand English and read the works of English
economists in French translations. This twofold translation
carried with it a slight change of expression, for instance in
the case of Steuart, Ure, and others. Now I used the English
text. Such and' similar little inaccuracies and inadvertences
were corrected. And if this fourth edition is now compared
with former editions, it will be found tha4-4hi3 whole tedious
process of verification did not change in the least any essential
statement of this work. There is but one single quotation
which could not be located, namely that from Richard Jones,
in section 3 of chapter XXIV. Marx probably made a mis
take in the title of the book. All other quotations retain their
corroborative power, or even increase it in their present exact
form.

In this connection I must revert to an old story.

X have heard of only one case, in which the genuineness of

34? Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition.

a quotation by Marx was questioned. Since this case was
continued beyond Marx's death, I cannot well afford to ignore
it.

The Berlin Concordia, the organ of the German Manufac-.
turer's Association, published on March 7, 1872, an anony
mous article, entitled : "How Marx Quotes." In it the writer
asserted with a superabundant display of moral indignation
and unparliamentarian expressions that the quotation from
Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863, (cited in the
Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen's Asso
ciation, 1864, and republished in Capital, volume I, chapter
XXV, section 5 a) was a falsification. It was denied that the
statement: "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power . . . entirely confined to classes of property," was
contained in the stenographical report of Hansard, which was
as good as an official report. "This statement is not found
anywhere in Gladstone's speech. It says just the reverse.
Marx has formally and materially lied in adding that sen
tence."

Marx, who received this issue of the Concordia in May of
the same year, replied to the anonymous writer in the Volks-
staat of June 1. As he did not remember the particular
newspaper from which he had clipped this report, he con
tented himself with pointing out that the same quotation was
contained in two English papers. Then he quoted the report
of the Times, according to which Gladstone had said : "That
is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country.
I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension
and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth
and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to classes
who are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognizance at
all of the condition of the labouring population. The aug
mentation I have described and which is founded, I think,

Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition 35

apon accurate terms, is an augmentation entirely confined to
classes of property."

In other words, Gladstone says here that he would be sorry
if things were that way, but they are. This intoxicating aug
mentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes
of property. And so far as the quasi official Hansard is con
cerned, Marx continues : "In the subsequent manipulation of
his speech for publication Mr. Gladstone was wise enough to
eliminate a passage, which was so compromising in the mouth
of an English Lord of the Exchequer as that one. By the
way, this is an established custom in English parliament, and
not by any means a discovery made by Lasker to cheat Bebel."

The anonymous writer then became still madder. Pushing
aside his second-hand sources in his reply in the Concordia,
July 4, he modestly hints, that it is the "custom" to quote
parliamentarian speeches from the official reports; that the
report of the Times (which contained the added lie) "was
materially identical" with that of Hansard (which did not
contain it) ; that the report of the Times even said "just the
reverse of what that notorious passage of the Inaugural Ad
dress implied." Of course, our anonymous friend keeps still
about the fact that the report of the Times does not only con
tain "just the reverse," but also "that notorious passage"!
Nevertheless he feels that he has been nailed down, and that
only a new trick can save him. Hence he decorates his article,
full of "insolent mendacity," until it bristles with pretty
epithets, such as "bad faith," "dishonesty," "mendacious as
sertion," "that lying quotation," "insolent mendacity," "a
completely spurious quotation," "this falsification," "simply
infamous," etc., and he finds himself compelled to shift the
discussion to another ground, promising "to explain in a sec
ond article, what interpretation we [the "veracious" anony
mous] place upon the meaning of Gladstone's words." As

36 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition.

though his individual opinion had anything to do with the
matter! This second article is published in the Concordia
of July 11.

Marx replied once more in the Volksstaat of August 7,
quoting also the reports of this passage in the Morning Star
and Morning Advertiser of April 17, 1863. Both of them
agree in quoting Gladstone to the effect that he would look
with apprehension, etc., upon this intoxicating augmentation
of wealth and power, if it were confined to classes in easy cir
cumstances. But this augmentation was entirely confined to
classes possessed of property. Both of these papers also con
tain the "added lie" word for word. Marx furthermore
showed, by comparing these three independent, yet identical
reports of newspapers, all of them containing the actually
spoken worr3s of Gladstone, with Hansard's report, that Glad
stone, in keeping with the "established custom," had "sub
sequently eliminated" this sentence, as Marx had said. And
Marx closes with the statement, that he has no time for further
controversy with the anonymous writer. It seems that this
worthy had gotten all he wanted, for Marx received no more
issues of the Concordia.

Thus the matter seemed to be settled. It is true, people
who were in touch with the university at Cambridge once or
twice dropped hints as to mysterious rumors about some un
speakable literary crime, which Marx was supposed to have
committed in Capital. But nothing definite could be ascer
tained in spite of all inquiries. Suddenly, on November 29,
1883, eight months after the death of Marx, a letter appeared
in the Times, dated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and signed
by Sedley Taylor, in which this mannikin, a dabbler in the
tamest of cooperative enterprises, at last took occasion to give
us some light, not only on the gossip of Cambridge, but also
on the anonymous of the Concordia.

Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. 37

"What seems very queer," says the mannikin of Trinity
College, "is that it remained for professor Brenta-no (then in
Breslau, now in Strasburg) ... to lay bare the bad
faith, which had apparently dictated that quotation from
Gladstone's speech in the Inaugural Address. Mr. Karl Marx,
who . . . tried to justify his quotation, had the temerity,
in the deadly shifts to which Brentano's masterly attacks
quickly reduced him, to claim that Mr. Gladstone tampered
with the report of his speech in the Times of April 17, 1863,
before it was published in Hansard, in order to eliminate a
passage which was, indeed, compromising for the British
Chancellor of the Exchequer. When Brentano demonstrated
by a detailed comparison of the texts, that the reports of the
Times and of Hansard agreed to the absolute exclusion of the
meaning, impugned to Gladstone's words by a craftily isolated
quotation, Marx retreated under the excuse of having no time."

This, then^ was the_JEernel of the walnut! And such was
the glorious reflex of Brentano's anonymous campaign, in the
Concordia, in the cooperative imagination of Cambridge!
Thus he lay, and thus he handled his blade in his "masterly
attack," this Saint George of the German Manufacturers' As
sociation, while the fiery dragon Marx quickly expired under
his feet "in deadly shifts !"

However, this Ariostian description of the struggle serves
only to cover up the shifts of our Saint George. There is no
longer any mention of "added lies," of "falsification," but
merely of "a craftily isolated quotation." The whole question
had been shifted, and Saint George and his Cambridge Knight
knew very well the reason.

Eleanor Marx replied in the monthly magazine To-Day,
February, 1884, because the Times refused to print her state
ments. She reduced the discussion to the only point, which
was in question, namely: Was that sentence a lie added by

38 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition.

Marx, or not ? Whereupon Mr. Sedley Taylor retorted : "The
question whether a certain sentence had occurred in Mr. Glad
stone's speech or not" was, in his opinion, "of a very inferior
importance" in the controversy between Marx and Brentano,
"compared with the question, whether the quotation had been
made with the intention of reproducing the meaning of Mr.
Gladstone or distorting it" And then he admits that the
report of the Times "contains indeed a contradiction in
words"; but, but, interpreting the context correctly, that is,
in a liberal Gladstonian sense, it is evident what Mr. Gladstone
intended to say. (To-Day, March, 1884.) The comic thing
about this retort is that our mannikin of Cambridge now in
sists on not quoting this speech from Hansard, as is the
"custom" according to the anonymous Mr. Brentano, but from
the report of the Times, which the same Brentano had desig
nated as "necessarily bungling." Of course, Hansard does
not contain that fatal sentence !

It was easy for Eleanor Marx to dissolve this argumentation
into thin air in the same number of To-Day. Either Mr.
Taylor had read the controversy of 1872. In that case he had
now "lied," not only "adding," but also "subtracting." Or,
he had not read it. Then it was his business to keep his
mouth shut. At any rate, it was evident that he did not dare
for a moment to maintain the charge of his friend Brentano
to the effect that Marx had "added a lie." On he contrary,
it was now claimed, that Marx, instead of adding a lie, had
suppressed an important sentence. But this same sentence is
quoted on page 5 of the Inaugural Address, a few lines before
the alleged "added lie." And as for the "contradiction" in
Gladstone's speech, isn't it precisely Marx who speaks in
another foot note of that chapter in Capital of the "continual
crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches of 1868
and 1864" ? Of course, he does not undertake TO reconcile

Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. 39

them by liberal hot air, like Sedley Taylor. And the final
summing up in Eleanor Marx's reply is this: "On the con
trary, Marx has neither suppressed anything essential nor
added any lies. He rather has restored and rescued from
oblivion a certain sentence of a Gladstonian speech, which had
undoubtedly been pronounced, but which somehow found its
way out of Hansard."

This was enough for Mr. Sedley Taylor. The result of
this whole professorial gossip during ten years and in two
great countries was that no one dared henceforth to question
Marx's literary conscientiousness. In the future Mr. Sedley
Taylor will probably have as little confidence in the literary
fighting bulletins of Mr. Brentano, as Mr. Brentano in thf
papal infallibility of Hansard.

FREDEKICK ENGELS.

LONDON, June 25, 1890.

(Translated by Ernest Untermann.)

BOOK I.

CAPITALIST PRODUCTION

PAfiTI.
COMMODITIES AND MONEY.

CHAPTER I.

COMMODITIES.
BBOTION 1. THE TWO FACTORS OF A COMMODITY: USErVALUE

AND VALUE (THE SUBSTANCE OF VALUE AND THE
MAGNITUDE OF VALUE).

THE wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode
of production prevails, presents itself as " an immense
accumulation of commodities," * its unit being a single com
modity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the
analysis of a commodity.

A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a
thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort
or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance,
they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no differ-

* Karl Marx " A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," 1859,
London, p. 19.

42 Capitalist Production.

ence.1 Neither are we here concerned to know how the object
satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence,
or indirectly as means of production.

Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at
from the two points of view of quality and quantity. It is
an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of
use in various ways. To discover the various use of things is
the work of history.2 So also is the establishment of socially-
recognised standards of measure for the quantities of these
useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin
partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured,
partly in convention.

The utility of a thing makes it a use-value.8 But this
utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical
properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from
that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a
diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use-
value, something useful. This property of a commodity is
independent of the amount 01 labour required to appropriate
its useful qualities. When treating of use-value, we always
assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens
j of watches, yards of linen, or "tons of iron. The use-values of
commodities furnish the material for a special study, that
of the commercial knowledge of commodities.4 Use-values
become a reality only by use or consumption : they also con-

1 " Desire implhs want; 't ?» the appetite of the mind, and as natural as hunger
to the bod> . . . The -Teate.. number (of things) have their value from supply-
Ing the wants of the mind." Nicolas Barbon: "A Discourse on coining the new
money lighter, in answer to Mr. Locke's Considerations," &c. London, 1696. p.
2, 3.

* "Things have an intrinsick virtue" (this is Barbon's special term for value in
use) "which in all places ' ive the same virtue; as the loadstone to attract iron"
(1. c., p. 6). The property -'hich the magnet possesses of attracting iron, became
of use only after by means of that property the polarity of the magnet had been
discovered.

' "The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities,
or serve the conveniences of human life." (John Locke, "Some considerations on
the consequences of the lowering of interest, 1691," in Works Edit London, 1777,
Vol. II., p. 28.) In English writers of the 17th century we frequently find "worth"
in the sense of value in use, and "value" in the sense of exchange value. This
is quite in accordance with the spirit of a language that likes to use a Teutonic
word for the actual thing, and a Romance word for its reflexion.

4 in oourgeois societies tne economical hctao *"«•»• prevails, that every one, as a
buyer, possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of commodities.

Commodities. 43

stitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social •
form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to )
consider, they are, in addition^ the material depositories of '
exchange value.

Exchange value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative
relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort
are exchanged for those of another sort,1 a relation constantly
changing with time and place. Hence exchange value appears
to be something accidental and purely relative, and conse
quently an intrinsic value, i. e., an exchange value that is
inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a
contradiction in terms.2 Let us consider the matter a little
more closely.

A given commodity, e. g.t a quarter of wheat is exchanged
for x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c. — in short, for other com
modities in the most different proportions. Instead of one
exchange value, the wheat has, therefore, a great many. But
since x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c., each represent the
exchange value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking, y silk,
z gold, &c., must as exchange values be replaceable by each
other, or equal to each other. Therefore, first: the valid
exchange values of a given commodity express something
equal; secondly, exchange value, generally, is only the mode
of expression, the phenomenal form, of something contained
in it, yet distinguishable from it.

Let us take two commodities, e. g.t corn and iron. The pro
portions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those pro
portions may be, can always be represented by an equation in
which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of
iron : e. g., 1 quarter corn=x cwt iron. What does this equa
tion tell us ? It tells us that in two different things — in 1
quarter of corn and x cwL of iron, there exists in equal quan
tities jomething common to both. The two things must there-

1 "La valeur consiste dans le rapport d'£change qui BC trouve entre telle chose et
telle autre, entre telle mesure d'une production, et telle mesure d'une autre." (Le
Trosne: De 1' Inte>et Social. Physiocrates, Ed. Daire, Paris, 1845. P. 889.)

1 "Nothing can have an intrinsick value." (N. Barbon, 1. c., p. 6) ; or as But
ler says —

" The value of a thing
Is just as much at it will bring,"

44 Capitalist Production.

fore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one noi
the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must
therefore be reducible to this third.

A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear. In
order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures,
we decompose them into triangles. But the area of the tri
angle itself is expressed by something totally different from its
visible figure, namely, by half the product of the base into
the altitude. In the same way the exchange values of com
modities must be capable of being expressed in terms of some
thing common to them all, of which thing they represent a
greater or less quantity.

This common "something" cannot be either a geometrical,
a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities.
Such properties claim our attention only in so far as they
affect the utility of those commodities, make them use-values.
But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act character
ised by a total abstraction from use-value. Then one use-
value is just as good as another, provided only it be present in
sufficient quantity. Or, as old Barbon says, "one sort of
wares are as good as another, if the values be equal. There is
no difference or distinction in things of equal value . . . .
An hundred pounds' worth of lead or iron, is of as great value
as one hundred pounds' worth of silver or gold." l As use-
values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as
exchange values they are merely different quantities, and con
sequently do not contain an atom of use-value.

If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of com
modities, they have only one common property left, that of
being products of labour. But even the product of labour
itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make
abstraction from its use-value, we make abstraction at the
same time from the material elements and shapes that make
the product a use-value ; we see in it no longer a table, a house,
yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material
thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be re
garded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason,

»N. Barbon, 1. c. p. 53 tad 7.

Commodities. 45

the Spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive
labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products them
selves, we put out of eight both the useful character of the
various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete
forms of that labour ; there is nothing left but what is common
to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of
labour, human labour in the abstract.

Let us now consider the residue of each of these products;
it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, ji mere
congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour-power ex-
pended without re.qrard to the mode of its expenditure. All
that these things now tell us is, that human labour-power has
been expended in their production, that human labor is em
bodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social
substance, common to them all, they are — Values.

We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their
exchange value manifests itself as something totally independ
ent of their use-value. But if we abstract from their use-value,
there remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the
common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value
of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value.
The progress of our investigation will show that exchange
value is the only form in ^hich the value of commodities can
manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we
have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its
form.

A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only be
cause human labour in the abstract has been embodied or ma
terialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to
be measured ? Plainly, by the quantity ofjhe value-creating
substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quantity
of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour-
time in its turn finds its standarcMnjwe^^jiaysT anfl ^our8-

Some people" migEtftEink that if the value of a commodity
is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more
idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his
commodity be, because more time would be required in its
production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of

46 Capitalist Production.

value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uni
form labour-power. The total labour-power of society, which
is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities
produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass
of human labour-power, composed though it be of innumerable
individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other,
so far as it has the character of the average labour-power of
society, and takes effect as such ; that is, so far as it requires for
producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an
average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour-time
socially necessary is that^quire^^^o3uce an article under
the normal conditions of production, and with the average
degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The intro
duction of power looms into England probably reduced by one
half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into
• cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued
'• to require the same time as before; but for all that, the pro-
| duct of one hour of their labour represented after the change
only half an hour's social labour, and consequently fell to one-
half its former value.

We see then that that which determines the magnitude of
the value of any article is the amount of labour socially neces
sary, or the labour- time socially necessary for its production.1
Each individual commodity, in this connexion, is to be con
sidered as an average sample of its class.2 Commodities, there
fore, in which equal quantities of labour are embodied, or
which can be produced in the same time, have the same value.
The value of one commodity is to the value of any other, as the
labour-time necessary for the production of the one is to that
necessary for the production of the other. "As values, all com
modities are only definite masses of congealed labour-time." 8

1 The value of them (the necessaries of life), when they are exchanged the
one for another, is regulated by the quantity of labour necessarily required, and
commonly taken in producing them." (Some Thoughts on the Interest of Money
in general, and particularly in the Publick Funds, &c., Lond., p. 86.) This re
markable anonymous work, written in the last century, bears no date. It is
U clear, however, from internal evidence, that it appeared in the reign of George
II. about 1789 or 1740.

• " Toutes les productions d'un meme genre ne forment proprement qu'une masse,
dont le prix se determine en general et sans egard aux circonstances particulieres."
(Lt Trosne, 1. c. p. 898.) »K. Marx, 1. c. p. 24.

Commodities. 47

The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant,
if the labour-time required for its production also remained
constant. But the latter changes with every variation in the
productiveness of labour. This productiveness is determined
by various circumstances, amongst others, by the average
amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the
degree of its practical application, the social organisation of
production, the extent and capabilities of the means of pro
duction, and by physical conditions. For example, the
same amount of labour in favourable seasons is embodied
in 8 bushels of corn, and in unfavourable, only in four.
The same labour extracts from rich mines more metal than
from poor mines. Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on
the earth's surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an aver
age, a great deal of labour-time. Consequently much labour
is represented in a small compass. Jacob doubts whether gold
has ever been paid for at its full value. This applies still
more to diamonds. According to Eschwege, the total produce
of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years, ending
in 1823, had not realised the price of one-and-a-half years'
average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the
same country, although the diamonds cost much more labour,
and therefore represented more value. With richer mines, the
same quantity of labour would embody itself in more diamonds
and their value would fall. If we could succeed at a small
expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds,
their value might fall below that of bricks. In general, the
greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labour-time
required for the production of an article, the less is the amount
of labour crystallised in that article, and the less is its value ;
and vise versa, the less the productiveness of labour, the greater
is the labour-time required for the production of an article,
and the greater is its value. The value of a commodity, there
fore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the
productiveness, of the labour incorporated in it.

A thing can be a use-value, without having value. This is
the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour.
Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can

48 Capitalist Production.

be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a
commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the
produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use-values, but not
commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only
produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values.
Lastly, nothing can have value, without being an object of
utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in
it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates
no value.

SECTION 2. THE TWOFOLD CHARACTER OF THE LABOUB EM
BODIED IN COMMODITIES.

At first sight a commodity presented itself to us as a complex
of two things — use-value and exchange-value. Later on, we
saw also that labour, too, possesses the same two-fold nature;
for, so far as it finds expression in value, it does not possess the
same characteristics that belong to it as a creator of use-values.
I was the first to point out and to examine critically this two
fold nature of the labour contained in commodities. As this
point is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political
economy turns, we must go more into detail.

Let us take two commodities such as a coat and 10 yards of
linen, and let the former be double the value of the latter, so
that, if 10 yards of linen=W, the coatF=2W.

The coat is a use-value that satisfies a particular want. Its
existence is the result of a special sort of productive activity,
the nature of which is determined by its aim, mode of opera
tion, subject, means, and result. The labour, whose utility is
thus represented by the value in use of its product, or which
manifests itself by making its product a use-value, we call
useful labour. In this connexion we consider only its useful
effect.

As the coat and the linen are two qualitatively different use-
values, so also are the two forms of labour that produce them,
tailoring and weaving. Were these two objects not quali«
tatively different, not produced respectively by labour of
different quality, they could not stand to each other in the

Commodities. 49

relation of commodities. Coats are not exchanged for coats,
one use-value is not exchanged for another of the same kind.

To all the different varieties of values in use there correspond
as many different kinds of useful labour, classified according tc
the order, genus, species, and variety to which they belong in
the social division of labour. This division of labour is a neces
sary condition for the production of commodities, but it does
not follow conversely, that the production of commodities is a
necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive
Indian community there is social division of labour, without
production of commodities. Or, to take an example nearer
home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a
system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives
mutually exchanging their individual products. Only such
products can become commodities with regard to each other, as
result from different kinds of labour, each kind being carried
on independently and for the account of private individuals.

To resume, then : In the use-value of each commodity there
is contained useful labour, i. e.f productive activity of a definite
kind and exercised with a definite aim. Use-values cannot
confront each other as commodities, unless the useful labour
embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them.
In a community, the produce of which in general takes the
form of commodities, i. e., in a community of commodity pro
ducers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of
labour that are carried on independently by individual pro
ducers, each on their own account, develops into a complex
system, a social division of labour.

Anyhow, whether the coat be worn by the tailor or by his
customer, in either case it operates as a use-value. Kor is the
relation between the coat and the labour that produced it
altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have become a
special trade, an independent branch of the social division of
labour. Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the
human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a
single man becoming a tailor. But coats and linen, like every
other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous
produce of nature, must invariably owe their existence to a

cjO Capitalist Production.

special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, an
activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to
particular human wants. So far therefore as labour is a
creator of use-value, is useful labour, it is a necessary con
dition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of
the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity,
without which there can be no material exchanges between
man and Nature, and therefore no life.

The use-values, coat, linen, &c., i. e.f the bodies of commodi
ties, are combinations of two elements — matter and labour.
If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a
material substratum is always left, which is furnished by
Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as
Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.1 Nay
more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped
by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only
source of material wealth, of use-values produced by labour.
As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its
mother.

Let us now pass from the commodity considered as a use*
value to the value of commodities.

By our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the
linen. But this is a mere quantitative difference, which for the
present does not concern us. We bear in mind, however, that
if the value of the coat is double that of 10 yds. of linen, 20
yds. of linen must have the same value as one coat. So far
as they are values, the coat and the linen are things of a like
substance, objective expressions of essentially identical labour.
But tailoring and weaving are, qualitatively, different kinds of
labour. There are, however, states of society in which one and

1 Tutti i fenomeni dell' universe, sieno essi prodotti della mano, dell' uomo, ovvero
delle universali leggi della fisica, non ci danno idea dl attuale creazione, ma
unlcamente di una modificazione della materia. Accostare e separare sono gli unici
elementi che 1'ingegno umano ritrova analizzando 1'idea della riproduzione: e Unto 4
riproduzione di valore (value in use, although Verri in this passage of his contro
versy with the Physiocrats is not himself quite certain of the kind of value he is
speaking of) e di ricchezze se la terra 1'aria c 1'acqua ne' campi si trasmutino in
grano, come se colla mano dell* uomo il glutine di un insetto si trasmuti in velluto
owero alcuni pezzetti di metallo si organizzino a formare una ripetizione." —
Pietro Verri. "Meditazioni sulla Economia Politica" [first printed in 1778]
in Custodi's edition of the Italian Economists, Parte Moderna, t. xv. p. 82.

Commodities. 51

the same man does tailoring and weaving alternately, in which
case these two forms of labour are mere modifications of the
labour of the same individual, and not special and fixed func
tions of different persons; just as the coat which our tailor
makes one day, and the trousers which he makes another day,
imply only a variation in the labour of one and the same indi
vidual. Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist
society, a given portion of human labour is, in accordance with
the varying demand, at one time supplied in the form of tailor
ing, at another in the form of weaving. This change may
possibly not take place without friction, but take place it must.
Productive activity, if we leave out of sight its special form,
viz., the useful character of the labour, is nothing but the ex
penditure of human labour-power. Tailoring and weaving,
though qualitatively different pfbcfuctive activities, are each a
productive expenditure of human brains, nerves, and muscles,
and in this sense are human labour. They are but two
different modes of expending human labour-power. Of course,
this labour-power, which remains the same under all its modi
fications, must have attained a certain pitch of development
before it can be expended in a multiplicity of modes. But the
value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract,
the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in
society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere
man, on the other hand, a very shabby part,1 so here with
mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour-
power, i.e., of the labour-power which, on an average, apart
from any special development, exists in the organism of every
ordinary individual. Simple average labour, it is true, varies
in character in different countries and at different times, but ,
in a particular society it is given. Skilled labour counts only •
as simple labour intensified, or ratherTTs" 'multiplied simple
labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a ^
greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this /
reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the '
product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating
it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a

JComp. Hegel, Philosophic des Rcchts. Berlin, 1840, p. 250 $ 190.

52 Capitalist Production.

definite quantity of the latter labour alone.1 The different
proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to
unskilled labour as their standard, are established by a social
process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and,
consequently, appear to be fixed by custom. For simplicity's
sake we sfeall henceforth account every kind of labour to be
unskilled, simple labour; by this we do no more than save
ourselves the trouble of making the reduction.

Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values,
we abstract from their different use-values, so it is with the
labour represented by those values : we disregard the difference
between its useful forms, weaving and tailoring. As the use-
values, coat and linen, are combinations of special productive
activities with cloth and yarn, while the values, coat and linen,
are, on the other hand, mere homogeneous congelations of
indifferentiated labour, so the labour embodied in these latter
values does not count by virtue of its productive relation to
cloth and yarn, but only as being expenditure of human
labour-power. Tailoring and weaving are necessary factors in
the creation of the use-values, coat and linen, precisely because
these two kinds of labour are of different qualities; but only
in so far as abstraction is made from their special qualities,
only in so far as both possess the same quality of being human
labour, do tailoring and weaving form the substance of the
values of the same articles.

Coats and linen, however, are not merely values, but values
of definite magnitude, and according to our assumption, the
coat is worth twice as much as the ten yards of linen. Whence
this difference in their values? It is owing to the fact that
the linen contains only half as much labour as the coat,
and consequently, that in the production of the latter, labour-
power must have been expended during twice the time neces
sary for the production of the former.

While, therefore, with reference to use-value, the labour con
tained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with refer-

1 The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value
that the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the com*
modity in which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as
jr«t, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation.

Commodities. 53

ence to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be
reduced to human labour pure and simple. In the former
case, it is a question of How and What, in the latter of How
much ? How long a time ? Since the magnitude of the value of
a commodity represents only the quantity of labour embodied
in it, it follows that all commodities, when taken in certain
proportions, must be equal in value.

If the productive power of all the different sorts of useful
labour required for the production of a coat remains unchanged,
the sum of the values of the coat produced increases with
their number. If one coat represents x days' labour, two
coats represent 2x days' labour, and so on. But assume that
the duration of the labour necessary for the production of a
coat becomes doubled or halved. In the first case, one coat is
worth as much as two coats were before ; in the second case,
two coats are only worth as much as one was before, although
in both cases one coat renders the same service as before, and
the useful labour embodied in it remains of the same quality.
But the quantity of labour spent on its production has altered.

An increase in the quantity of use-values is an increase of
material wealth. With two coats two men can be clothed,
with one coat only one man. Nevertheless, an increased quan- '
tity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous j
fall in the magnitude of its value. This antagonistic move- j
ment has its origin in the two-fold character of labour.
Productive powertHB-TefeTenee, of course, only to labour of
some useful concrete form ; the efficacy of any special produc
tive activity during a given time being dependent on its
productiveness. Useful labour becomes, therefore, a more or
less abundant source of products, in proportion to the rise or
fall of its productiveness. On the other hand, no change in this
productiveness affects the labour represented by value. Since
productive power is an attribute of the concrete useful forms
of labour, of course it can no longer have any bearing on that
labour, so soon as we make abstraction from those concrete
useful forms. However then productive power may vary, the

same labour, exercised during equal periods of time, always
yields equal amounts of value. But it will yield, during equal

54 Capitalist Production.

periods of time, different quantities of values in use ; more, if
the productive power rise, fewer, if it fall. The same change
in productive power, which increases the fruitfulness of labour,
and, in consequence, the quantity of use-values produced by
that labour, will diminish the total value of this increased
quantity of use-values, provided such change shorten the total
labour-time necessary for their production; and vice vers<i.

On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an
expenditure of human labour-power, and in its character of
identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value
of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is the expendi
ture of human labour-power in a special form and with a
definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour,
it produces use-values.1

SECTION 3. THE FOBM OF VALUE OR EXCHANGE VALUE.

Commodities come into the world in the shape of use-values,
articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c. This is their
plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities,

1 In order to prove that labour alone is that all-sufficient and real measure,
by which at all times the value of all commodities can be estimated and com
pared, Adam Smith says, " Equal quantities of labour must at all times and in all
places have the same value for the labourer. In his normal state of health, strength
and activity, and with the average degree of skill that he may possess, he must
always give up the same portion of his rest, his freedom, and his happiness."
(Wealth of Nations, b. I. ch. v.) On the one hand, Adam Smith here (but not
everywhere) confuses the determination of value by means of the quantity of
labour expended in the production of commodities, with the determination of the
values of commodities by means of the value of labour, and seeks in consequence
to prove that equal quantities of labour have always the same value. On the
other hand, he has a presentiment, that labour, so far as it manifests itself in
the value of commodities, counts only as expenditure of labour power, but he
treats this expenditure as the mere sacrifice of rest, freedom, and happiness, not as
the same time the normal activity of living beings. But then, he has the mod
ern wage-labourer in his eye. Much more aptly, the anonymous predecessor of
Adam Smith, quoted above in Note *, p. 6, says, " one man has employed him
self a week in providing this necessary of life . . . and he that gives him
some other in exchange, cannot make a better estimate of what is a proper
equivalent, than by computing what cost him just as much labour and time;
which in effect is no more than exchanging one man's labour in one thing for
a time certain, for another man's labour in another thing for the same time."
(1. c. p. 39.) [The English language has the advantage of possessing different
words for the two aspects of labour here considered. The labour which create*
Use-Value, and counts qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour; thai
which creates Value and counts quantitatively, is Labour as distingiushed from
Work. — ED.]

Commodities. 55

only because they are something twofold, both objects of utility,
and, at the same time, depositories of value. They manifest
themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of com
modities, only in so far as they have two forms, a physical
or natural form, and a value form.

The reality of the value of commodities differs in this respect
from Dame Quickly, that we don't know "where to have it."
The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse ma
teriality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its
composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself,
as we will. Yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it
seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind
that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and
that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expres
sions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., hu
man labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only
manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to com
modity. In fact we started from exchange value, or the
exchange relation of commodities, in order to get at the value
that lies hidden behind it. We must now return to this form
under which value first appeared to us.

Every one knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities
have a value form common to them all, and presenting a
marked contrast with the varied bodily forms of their use-
values. I mean their money form. Here, however, a task is
set us, the performance of which has never yet even been at
tempted by bourgeois economy, the task of tracing the genesis
of this money form, of developing the expression of value im
plied in the value relation of commodities, from its- simplest,
almost imperceptible outline, to the dazzling money form. By
doing this we shall, at the same time, solve the riddle presented
by money.

The simplest value relation is evidently that of one com
modity to some one other commodity of a different kind.
Hence the relation between the values of two commodities sup
plies us with the simplest expression of the value of a single
commodity.

56 Capitalist Production.

A. Elementary or Accidental Form of Value.
x commodity A=y commodity B, or
x commodity A is worth y commodity R
20 yards of linen=l coat, or
20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat.

1. The two poles of the expression of value : Relative form and
Equivalent form.

The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in
this elementary form. Its analysis, therefore, is our real
difficulty.

Here two different kinds of commodities (in our example
the linen and the coat), evidently play two different parts.
The linen expresses its value in the coat ; the coat serves as the
material in which that value is expressed. The former play*;
an active, the latter a passive, part. The value of the linen is
represented as relative value, or appears in relative form.
The coat officiates as equivalent, or appears in equivalent
form.

The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimate
ly connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of
the expression of value; but, at the same time, are mutually
exclusive, antagonistic extremes — i.e., poles of the same ex
pression. They are allotted respectively to the two different
commodities brought into relation by that expression. It is
not possible to express the value of linen in linen. 20 yards
of linen=20 yards of linen is no expression of value. On the
contrary, such an equation merely says that 20 yards of linen
are nothing else than 20 yards of linen, a definite quantity of
the use-value linen. The value of the linen can therefore be
expressed only relatively — i.e., in some other commodity. The
relative form of the value of the linen pre-supposes, therefore,
the presence of some other commodity — here the coat — under
the form of an equivalent. On the other hand, the commodity
that figures as the equivalent cannot at the same time assume
the relative form. That second commodity is not the one
whose value is expressed. Its function is merely to serve as

Commodities. 57

the material in which the value of the first commodity is ex
pressed.

No doubt, the expression 20 yards of linen=l coat, or 20
yards of linen are worth 1 coat, implies the opposite relation : 1
coatF=20 yards of linen, or 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen.
But, in that case, I must reverse the equation, in order to ex
press the value of the coat relatively; and, so soon as I do
that the linen becomes the equivalent instead of the coat.
A single commodity cannot, therefore, simultaneously assume,
in the same expression of value, both forms. The very
polarity of these forms makes them mutually exclusive.

Whether, then, a commodity assumes the relative form, or
the opposite equivalent form, depends entirely upon its acci
dental position in the expression of value — that is, upon
whether it is the commodity whose value is being expressed or
the commodity in which value is being expressed.

2. The Relative form of value.
(a.) The nature and import of this form.

In order to discover how the elementary expression of the
value of a commodity lies hidden in the value relation of two
commodities, we must, in the first place, consider the latter
entirely apart from its quantitative aspect. The usual mode of
procedure is generally the reverse, and in the value relation
nothing is seen but the proportion between definite quantities
of two different sorts of commodities that are considered equal
to each other. It is apt to be forgotten that the magnitudes
of different things can be compared quantitatively, only when
those magnitudes are expressed in terms of the same unit. It
is only as expressions of such a unit that they are of the same
denomination, and therefore commensurable.1

Whether 20 yards of linen=l coat or=20 coats or— x

1 The few economists, amongst whom is S. Bailey, who have occupied themselves
with the analysis of the form of value, have been unable to arrive at any result,
first, because they confuse the form of value with value itself; and second, be
cause, under the coarse influence of the practical bourgeois, they exclusively give
their attention to the quantitative aspect of the question. "The command of quan-
ity . . . constitute! value." ("Money and its Vicissitudes." London, 1837, p.
11. By S. Bailey.

58 Capitalist Production.

coats — that is, whether a given quantity of linen is worth few
or many coats, every such statement implies that the linen and
coats, as magnitudes of value, are expressions of the same unit,
things of the same kind. Linen==coat is the basis of the
equation.

But the two commodities whose identity of quality is thus
assumed, do not play the same part. It is only the value of
the linen that is expressed. And how ? By its reference to
the coat as its equivalent, as something that can be exchanged
for it In this relation the coat is the mode of existence of
value, is value embodied, for only as such is it the same as the
linen. On the other hand, the linen's own value comes to the
front, receives independent expression, for it is only as being
value that it is comparable with the coat as a thing of equal
value, or exchangeable with the coat To borrow an illustra
tion from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from
propyl formate. Yet both are made up of the same chemical
substances, carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (0), and
that, too, in like proportions — namely, C4H8O2. If now we
equate butyric acid to propyl formate, then, in the first place,
propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form oi
existence of C4H8O2 ; and in the second place, we should be
stating that butyric acid also consists of C4H8O2. Therefore,
by thus equating the two substances, expression would be given
to their chemical composition, while their different physical
forms would be neglected.

If we say that, as values, commodities are mere congelations
of human labour, we reduce them by our analysis, it is true, to
the abstraction, value; but we ascribe to this value no form
apart from their bodily form. It is otherwise in the value
relation of one commodity to another. Here, the one stands
forth in its character of value by reason of its relation to the
other.

By making the coat the equivalent of the linen, we equate
the labour embodied in the former to that in the latter. Now,
it is true that the tailoring, which makes the coat, is concrete
labour of a different sort from the weaving which makes the
linen. But the act of equating it to the weaving, reduces the

Commodities. 59

tailoring to that which is really equal in the two kinds of
labour, to their common character of human labour. In this
roundabout way, then, the fact is expressed, that weaving also,
in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from
tailoring, and, consequently, is abstract human labour. It is
the expression of equivalence between different sorts of com
modities that alone brings into relief the specific character of
value-creating labour, and this it does by actually reducing
the different varieties of labour embodied in the different
kinds of commodities to their common quality of human labour
in the abstract.1

There is, however, something else required beyond the ex
pression of the specific character of the labour of which the
value of the linen consists. Human labour-power in motion,
or human labour, creates value, but is not itself value. It
becomes value only in its congealed state, when embodied in
the form of some object. In order to express the value of the
linen as a congelation of human labour, that value must be
expressed as having objective existence, as being a something
materially different from the linen itself, and yet a something
common to the linen and all other commodities. The problem
is already solved.

When occupying the position of equivalent in the equation
of value, the coat ranks qualitatively as the equal of the linen,
as something of the same kind, because it is value. In this posi
tion it is a thing in which we see nothing but value, or whose
palpable bodily form represents value. Yet the coat itself, the
body of the commodity, coat, is a mere use-value. A coat as
such no more tells us it is value, than does the first piece of
linen we take hold of. This shows that when placed in value

1 The celebrated Franklin, one of the first economists, after Wm. Petty, who
saw through the nature of value, says : " Trade in general being nothing else but
the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is ... most justly
measured by labour." (The works of B. Franklin, 4c., edited by Sparks,
Boston, 1836, Vol. II., p. 267.) Franklin is unconscious that by estimating the
value of everything in labour, he makes abstraction from any difference in the
sorts of labour exchanged, and thus reduces them all to equal human labour.
But although ignorant of this, yet he says it. He speaks first of "the one labour,"
then of " the other labour," and finally of " labour," without further qualifica
tion, as the substance of the value of everything.

60 Capitalist Production.

relation to the linen, the coat signifies more than when out of
that relation, just as many a man strutting about in a gorgeous
uniform counts for more than when in mufti.

In the production of the coat, human labour-power, in the
shape of tailoring, must have been actually expended. Human
labour is therefore accumulated in it. In this aspect the coat
is a depository of value, but though worn to a thread, it does
not let this fact show through. And as equivalent of the linen
in the value equation, it exists under this aspect alone, counts
therefore as embodied value, as a body that is value. A, for
instance, cannot be "your majesty" to B, unless at the same
time majesty in B's eyes assumes the bodily form of A, and,
what is more, with every new father of the people, changes its
features, hair, and many other things besides.

Hence, in the value equation, in which the coat is the equiva
lent of the linen, the coat officiates as the form of value. The
value of the commodity linen is expressed by the bodily form of
the commodity coat, the value of one by the use-value of the
other. As a use-value, the linen is something palpably dif
ferent from the coat ; as value, it is the same as the coat, and
now has the appearance of a coat. Thus the linen acquires
a value form different from its physical form. The fact that
it is value, is made manifest by its equality with the coat, just
as the sheep's nature of a Christian is shown in his resemblance
to the Lamb of God.

We see, then, all that our analysis of the value of commo
dities has already told us, is told us by the linen itself, so soon
as it comes into communication with another commodity, the
coat. Only it betrays its thoughts in that language with
which alone it is familiar, the language of commodities. In
order to tell us that its own value is created by labour in its
abstract character of human labour, it says that the coat, in so
far as it is worth as much as the linen, and therefore is value,
consists of the same labour as the linen. In order to inform
us that its sublime reality as value is not the same as its buck
ram body, it says that value has the appearance of a coat, and
consequently that so far as the linen is value, it and the coat
are as like as two peas. We may here remark, that the Ian-

Commodities. . ^oAr 61

guage of commodities has, besides Hebrew, many other more or
less correct dialects. The German "werthsein," to be worth,
for instance, expresses in a less striking manner than the
Komance verbs "valere," "valer," "valoir," that the equating of
commodity B to commodity A, is commodity A's own mode of
expressing its value. Paris vaut bien une messe.

By means, therefore, of the value relation expressed in our
equation, the bodily form of commodity B becomes the value
form of commodity A, or the body of commodity B acts as a
mirror to the value of commodity A. 1 By putting itself in re
lation with commodity B, as value in propria persona, as the
matter of which human labour is made up, the commodity A
converts the value in use, B, into the substance in which to
express its, A's, own value. The value of A, thus expressed in
the use-value of B, has taken the form of relative value.

(b.) Quantitative determination of Relative value.

Every commodity, whose value it is intended to express, is a
useful object of given quantity, as 15 bushels of corn, or 100
Ibs. of coffee. And a given quantity of any commodity con
tains a definite quantity of human labor. The value-form
must therefore not only express value generally, but also value
in definite quantity. Therefore, in the value relation of com
modity A to commodity B, of the linen to the coat, not only is
the latter, as value in general, made the equal in quality of the
linen, but a definite quantity of coat (1 coat) is made the
equivalent of a definite quantity (20 yards) of linen.

The equation, 20 yards of linen=l coat, or 20 yards of linen
are worth one coat, implies that the same quantity of value-
substance (congealed labour) is embodied in both; that the
two commodities have each cost the same amount of labour or
the same quantity of labour time. But the labour time
necessary for the production of 20 yards of linen or 1 coat

1 In a sort of way, it is with man as with commodities. Since he comes into
the world neither with a looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtian philosopher,
to whom "I am I " is sufficient, man first sees and recognises himself in other
men. Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing him-
»«4f with Paul M being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in hi»
Patjliue personality, become* to Peter the type of th« genus homo.

62 Capitalist Production.

varies with every change in the productiveness of weaving or
tailoring. We have now to consider the influence of such
changes on the quantitative aspect of the relative expression of
value.

I. Let the value of the linen vary,1 that of the coat remain
ing constant. If, say in consequence of the exhaustion of flax-
growing soil, the labour time necessary for the production of
the linen be doubled, the value of the linen will also be doubled.
Instead of the equation, 20 yards of linen=l coat, we should
have 20 yards of linen=2 coats, since 1 coat would now con
tain only half the labour time embodied in 20 yards of liners.
If, on the other hand, in consequence, say, of improved loon™,
this labour time be reduced by one half, the value of the line:a
would fall by one half. Consequently, we should have 20
yards of linen=£ coat. The relative value of commodity A.,
i.e., its value expressed in commodity B, rises and falls directly
as the value of A, the value of B being supposed constant.

II. Let the value of the linen remain constant, while the
value of the coat varies. If, under these circumstances, in
consequence, for instance, of a poor crop of wool, the labou'*
time necessary for the production of a coat becomes doubled,
we have instead of 20 yards of linen =1 coat, 20 yards of linen
=| coat If, on the other hand, the value of the coat sinkn
by one half, then 20 yards of linen=2 coats. Hence, if thn
value of commodity A remain constant, its relative value ex
pressed in commodity B rises and falls inversely as the value
of B.

If we compare the different cases in I. and II., we see tha1;
the same change of magnitude in relative value may arise fron
totally opposite causes. Thus, the equation, 20 yards of liner
=1 coat, becomes 20 yards of linen=2 coats, either, because
the value of the linen has doubled, or because the value of the;
coat has fallen by one half ; and it becomes 20 yards of liner
=-J coat, either, because the value of the linen has fallen by
one half, or because the value of the coat has doubled.

III. Let the quantities of labour time respectively neces-

1 Value is here, as occasionally in the preceding pages, used in the sense CM
value determined as to quantity, or of magnitude of value.

Commodities. 63

sary for the production of the linen and the coat vary sim
ultaneously in the same direction and in the same proportion.
In this case 20 yards of linen continue equal to 1 coat, however
much their values may have altered. Their change of value is
seen as soon as they are compared with a third commodity,
whose value has remained constant If the values of all com
modities rose or fell simultaneously, and in the same propor
tion, their relative values would remain unaltered. Their real
change of value would appear from the diminished or increased
quantity of commodities produced in a given time.

IV. The labour time respectively necessary for the produc
tion of the linen and the coat, and therefore the value of these
commodities may simultaneously vary in the same direction,
but at unequal rates, or in opposite directions, or in other
ways. The effect of all these possible different variations, on
the relative value of a commodity, may be deduced from the
results of I., II., and III.

Thus real changes in the magnitude of value are neither
unequivocally nor exhaustively reflected in their relative
expression, that is, in the equation expressing the magnitude
of relative value. The relative value of a commodity may
vary, although its value remains constant. Its relative value
may remain constant, although its value varies; and finally,
simultaneous variations in the magnitude of value and in that
of its relative expression by no means necessarily correspond
in amount.1

1 Thi* incongruity between the magnitude of value and its relative expression
has, with customary ingenuity, been exploited by vulgar economists. For example
— "Once admit that A falls, because B, with which it is exchanged, rises, while
no less labour is bestowed in the meantime or A, and your general principle of
value falls to the ground. . . . If he [Ricardo] allowed that when A rises in
value relatively to B, B falls in value relatively to A, he cut away the ground on
which he rested his grand proposition, that the value of a commodity is ever de
termined by the labour embodied in it; for if a change in the cost of A alters not
only its own value in relation to B, for which it is exchanged, but also the value
of B relatively to that of A, though no change has taken place in the quantity
of labour to produce B, then not only the doctrine falls to the ground whiclr-

asserts that the quantity of labour bestowed on an article regulates its value,
but also that which affirms the cost of an article to regulate its value." (J.
Broadhurst: Political Economy, London, 1849, p. 11 and 14.

Mr. Broadhurst might just as well say: consider .the fractions £$, £$, ^J^, Sue.,
the number 10 remains unchanged, and yet its proportional magnitude, its magni-

64 Capitalist Production.

3. The Equivalent form of value.

We have seen that commodity A (the linen), by expressing
its value in the use-value of a commodity differing in kind
(the coat), at the same time impresses upon the latter a specific
form of value, namely that of the equivalent The commodity
linen manifests its quality of having a value by the fact that
the coat, without having assumed a value form different from
its bodily form, is equated to the linen. The fact that tho
latter therefore has a value is expressed by saying that tho
coat is directly exchangeable with it Therefore, when we say
that a commodity is in the equivalent form, we express tho
fact that it is directly exchangeable with other commodities.

When one commodity, such as a coat, serves as the equivalent
of another, such as linen, and coats consequently acquire tho
characteristic property of being directly exchangeable with
linen, we are far from knowing in what proportion the two am
exchangeable. The value of the linen being given in magni
tude, that proportion depends on the value of the coat.
Whether the coat serves as the equivalent and the linen a?
relative value, or the linen as the equivalent and the coat a.i
relative value, the magnitude of the coat's value is determined,
independently of its value form, by the labour time necessary
for its production. But whenever the coat assumes in thn
equation of value, the position of equivalent, its value acquirer
no quantitative expression ; on the contrary, the commodity
coat now figures only as a definite quantity of some article.

For instance, 40 yards of linen are worth — what? 2 coats.
Because the commodity coat here plays the part of equivalent,
because the use-value coat, as opposed to the linen, figures as
an embodiment of value, therefore a definite number of coatu
suffices to express the definite quantity of value in the linen.
Two coats may therefore express the quantity of value of 40
yards of linen, but they can never express the quantity of their
own value. A superficial observation of this fact, namely, tha -

tude relatively to the numbers 20, 50, 100, &c., continually diminishes. There
fore the great principle that the magnitude of a whole number, such as 10, i«
"regulated" by the number of times unity is contained in it, falls to the ground
— [The author explains in section 4 of this chapter, p. 99, note 1, wh»t he under
stands by " Vulgar Economy." — Ed.J

Commodities. 65

in the equation of value, the equivalent figures exclusively as
a simple quantity of some article, of some use-value, has misled
Bailey, as also many others, both before and after him, into
seeing, in the expression of value, merely a quantitative rela
tion. The truth being, that when a commodity acts as equiva
lent, no quantitative determination of its value is expressed.

The first peculiarity that strikes us, in considering the form
of the equivalent, is this : use-value becomes the form of mani
festation, the phenomenal form of its opposite, value.

The bodily form of the commodity becomes its value form.
But, mark well, that this quid pro quo exists in the case of any
commodity B, only when some other commodity A enters into
a value relation with it, and then only within the limits of this
relation. Since no commodity can stand in the relation of
equivalent to itself, and thus turn its own bodily shape into the
expression of its own value, every commodity is compelled
to choose some other commodity for its equivalent, and to ac
cept the use-value, that is to say, the bodily shape of that other
commodity as the form of its own value.

One of the measures that we apply to commodities as ma
terial substances, as use-values, will serve to illustrate this point.
A sugar-loaf being a body, is heavy, and therefore has weight :
but we can neither see nor touch this weight. We then take
various pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined
beforehand. The iron, as iron, is no more the form of manifes
tation of weight, than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order
to express the sugar-loaf as so much weight, we put it into a
weight-relation with the iron. In this relation, the iron
officiates as a body representing nothing but weight. A certain
quantity of iron therefore serves as the measure of the weight
of the sugar, and represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf,
weight embodied, the form of manifestation of weight. This
part is played by the iron only within this relation, into which
the sugar or any other body, whose weight has to be determined,
enters with the iron. Were they not both heavy, they could
not enter into this relation, and the one could therefore not
serve as the expression of the weight of the other. When we

throw both into the scales, we see in reality, that as weight

66 Capitalist Production.

they are both the same, and that, therefore, when taken in
proper proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the
substance iron, as a measure of weight, represents in relation
to the sugar-loaf weight alone, so, in our expression of value,
the material object, coat, in relation to the linen, represents
value alone.

Here, however, the analogy ceases. The iron, in the expres
sion of the weight of the sugar-loaf, represents a natural pro
perty common to both bodies, namely their weight; but the coal,
in the expression of value of the linen, represents a non-natural
property of both, something purely social, namely, their value.

Since the relative form of value of a commodity — the linen,
for example — expresses the value of that commodity, as being-
something wholly different from its substance and properties,
as being, for instance, coat-like, we see that this expression
itself indicates that some social relation lies at the bottom of
it. With the equivalent form it is just the contrary. The verj
essence of this form is that the material commodity itself — the
coat — just as it is, expresses value, and is endowed with the
form of value by Nature itself. Of course this holds good onlj
so long as the value relation exists, in which the coat stands in
the position of equivalent to the linen.1 Since, however, the
properties of a thing are not the result of its relations to other
things, but only manifest themselves in such relations, the
coat seems to be endowed with its equivalent form, its property
of being directly exchangeable, just as much by Nature as it is
endowed with the property of being heavy, or the capacity to
keep us warm. Hence the enigmatical character of the equiva
lent form which escapes the notice of the bourgeois political
economist, until this form, completely developed, confronts him
in the shape of money. He then seeks to explain away the
mystical character of gold and silver, by substituting for them
less dazzling commodities, and by reciting, with ever renewed
satisfaction, the catalogue of all possible commodities which at
one time or another have played the part of equivalent He

1 Such expressions of relations in genertl, called by Hegel reflex-categories, form
ft very curious class. For instance, one man is king only because other men stand
ix the relation of subject* to him. They, oa the contrary, imagine that they are
•abject* beoat»e h. ia kia»

Commodities. 67

has not the least suspicion that the most simple expression of
value, such as 20 yds. of linen =1 coat, already propounds the
riddle of the equivalent form for our solution.

The body of the commodity that serves as the equivalent,
figures as the materialism of human labour in the abstract
and is at the same time the product of some specifically useful
concrete labour. This concrete labour becomes, therefore, the
medium for expressing abstract human labour. If on the
one hand the coat ranks as nothing but the embodiment of
abstract human labour, so, on the other hand, the tailoring
which is actually embodied in it, counts as nothing but the
form under which that abstract labour is realised. In the ex
pression of value of the linen, the utility of the tailoring con
sists, not in making clothes, but in making an object, which we
at once recognise to be Value, and therefore to be a congelation
of labour, but of labour indistinguishable from that realised in
the value of the linen. In order to act as such a mirror of
value, the labour of tailoring must reflect nothing besides its
own abstract quality of being human labour generally.

In tailoring, as well as in weaving, human labour-power is
expended. Both, therefore, possess the general property of
being human labour, and may, therefore, in certain cases, such
as in the production of value, have to be considered under
this aspect alone. There is nothing mysterious in this. But
in the expression of value there is a complete turn of the
tables. For instance, how is the fact to be expressed that
weaving creates the value of the linen, not by virtue of being
weaving, as such, but by reason of its general property of being
human labour ? Simply by opposing to weaving that other
particular form of concrete labour (in this instance tailoring),
which produces the equivalent of the product of weaving.
Just as the coat in its bodily form became a direct expression
of value, so now does tailoring, a concrete form of labour,
appear as the direct and palpable embodiment of human labour
generally.

Hence, the second peculiarity of the equivalent form is, that
concrete labour becomes the form under which its opposite,
abstract human labour, manifests itself.

68 Capitalist Production.

But because this concrete labour, tailoring in our case, ranks
as, and is directly indentified with, undifferentiated human
labour, it also ranks as identical with any other sort of labor,
and therefore with that embodied in linen. Consequently,
although, like all other commodity-producing labour, it is the
labour of private individuals, yet, at the same time, it ranks as
labour directly social in its character. This is the reason why
it results in a product directly exchangeable with other com
modities. We have then a third peculiarity of the Equivalent
form, namely, that the labour of private individuals takes the
form of its opposite, labour directly social in its form.

The two latter peculiarities of the Equivalent form will
become more intelligible if we go back to the great thinker
who was the first to analyse so many forms, whether of
thought, society, or nature, and amongst them also the form of
value. I mean Aristotle.

In the first place, he clearly enunciates that the money form
of commodities is only the further development of the simple
form of value — i. e., of the expression of the value of one com
modity in some other commodity taken at random ; for he says

5 beds=l house (K\LVOI TTCVTI avrl OIKMXS) is not to \Q

distinguished from
5 beds— so much money.

(K\LVOJL irevrt. avrl . . . oaov at irwrt *Awu)

He further sees that the value relation which gives rise to
this expression makes it necessary that the house should quali
tatively be made the equal of the bed, and that, without such
an equalization, these two clearly different things could not
be compared with each other as commensurable quantities
"Exchange," he says, "cannot take place without equality, and
equality not without commensurability" ( ovr la-orrj^ py ovcn^s
crv/A/xcrpuxs ) . Here, however, he comes to a stop, and gives
up the further analysis of the form of value. "It is,
however, in reality, impossible (fg ptv ovv aX-rjOtia abwarov^ thst
such unlike things can be commensurable" — i. e., qualita
tively equal. Such an equalisation can only be something
foreign to their real nature, consequently only "a make-shift;
for practical purposes."

Commodities. 69

Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us, what barred the way to
his further analysis'; it was the absence of any concept of
value. What is that equal something, that common substance,
which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a
house ? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle.
And why not ? Compared with the beds, the house does re
present something equal to them, in so far as it represents what
is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is —
human labour.

There was, however, an important fact which prevented
Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is
merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour,
and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society
was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural
basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The
secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of
labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they
are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the
notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a
popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society
,in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form
of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation
between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The
brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he
discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a
relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in
which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what,
"in truth," was at the bottom of this equality.

4:. The Elementary form of value considered as a

The elementary form of value of a commodity is contained
in the equation, expressing its value relation to another com
modity of a different kind, or in its exchange relation to the
same. The value of commodity A is qualitatively expressed
by the fact that commodity B is directly exchangeable with it.
Its value is quantitively expressed by the fact, that a definite
quantity of B is exchangeable with a definite quantity of A.
In other words, the value of a commodity obtains independent

70 Capitalist Production.

and definite expression, by taking the form of exchange value.
When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common
parlance, that a commodity is both a use-value and an ex
change value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A com
modity is a use-value or object of utility, and a value. It
manifests itself as this two-fold thing, that it is, as soon as its
value assumes an independent form — viz., the form exchange
value. It never assumes this form when isolated, but only
when placed in a value or exchange relation with another
commodity of a different kind. When once we know this,
such a mode of expression does no harm ; it simply serves as an
abbreviation.

Our analysis has shown, that the form or expression of the
value of a commodity originates in the nature of value, and
not that value and its magnitude originate in the mode of
their expression as exchange value. This, however, is the
delusion as well of the mercantilists and their recent revivois,
Ferrier, Ganilh,1 and others, as also of their antipodes, the
modern bagmen of Free Trade, such as Bastiat The mercan
tilists lay special stress on the qualitative aspect of the
expression of value, and consequently on the equivalent for n
of commodities, which attains its full perfection in money.
The modern hawkers of Free Trade, who must get rid of their
article at any price, on the other hand, lay most stress on tLe
quantitative aspect of the relative form of value. For them
there consequently exists neither value, nor magnitude of
value, anywhere except in its expression by means of tie
exchange relation of commodities, that is, in the daily list of
prices current. MacLeod, who has taken upon himself 1x>
dress up the confused ideas of Lombard Street in the racxit
learned finery, is a successful cross between the superstitious
mercantilists, and the enlightened Free Trade bagmen.

A close scrutiny of the expression of the value of A in terms
of B, contained in the equation expressing the value relation of
A to B, has shown us that, within that relation, the bodily form

1 F. L, Ferrier, sous-inspecteur des douanes, "Du gouverneraent considere
dan» ses rapports av«c le commerce," Paris, 1805; and Charles Ganilh, " D-s-
Sjrstemes d'Economie politique," 2nd ed., Paris, 1821.

Commodities. 71

of A figures only as a use-value, the bodily form of B only as
the form or aspect of value. The opposition or contrast
existing internally in each commodity between use-value and
value, is, therefore, made evident externally by two com
modities being placed in such relation to each other, that the
commodity whose value it is sought to express, figures directly
as a mere use-value, while the commodity in which that value
is to be expressed, figures directly as mere exchange value.
Hence the elementary form of value of a commodity is the
elementary form in which the contrast contained in that
commodity, between use-value and value, becomes apparent.

Every product of labour is, in all states of society, a use-
value ; but it is only at a definite historical epoch in a society's
development that such product becomes a commodity, viz.,
at the epoch when the labour spent on the production of a
useful article becomes expressed as one of the objective
qualities of that article, i.e., as its value. It therefore follows
that the elementary value-form is also the primitive form
under which a product of labour appears historically as a
commodity, and that the gradual transformation of such
products into commodities, proceeds part passu with the
development of the value-form.

We perceive, at first sight, the deficiencies of the elementary
form of value : it is a mere germ, which must undergo a series
of metamorphoses before it can ripen into the Price-form.

The expression of the value of commodity A in terms of any
other commodity B, merely distinguishes the value from the
use-value of A, and therefore places A merely in a relation of
exchange with a single different commodity, B; but it is still
far from expressing A's qualitative equality, and quantitative
proportionality, to all commodities. To the elementary rela
tive value-form of a commodity, there corresponds the single
equivalent form of one other commodity. Thus, in the rela
tive expression of value of the linen, the coat assumes the form
of equivalent, or of being directly exchangeable, only in re
lation to a single commodity, the linen.

Nevertheless, the elementary form of value passes by an easy
transition into a more complete form. It is true that by means

72 Capitalist Production.

of the elementary form, the value of a commodity A, becomes
expressed in terms of one, and only one, other commodity.
But that one may be a commodity of any kind, coat, iron, corn,
or anything else. Therefore, according as A is placed in rela
tion with one or the other, we get for one and the same com
modity, different elementary expressions of value.1 The num
ber of such possible expressions is limited only by the number
of the different kinds of commodities distinct from it. The
isolated expression of A's value, is therefore convertible into a
series, prolonged to any length, of the different elementary ex
pressions of that value.

B. Total or Expanded form of value.

z Com. A=u Com. B or=v Com. C or— w Com. D or=x Com.

E or— &c.

(20 yards of linen^l coat or=10 Ib tea or = 40 lb coffee or=
1 quarter corn or=2 ounces gold oT=y2 ton iron or=&c.)

1. The Expanded Eelative form of value.

The value of a single commodity, the linen, for example, is
now expressed in terms of numberless other elements of the
world of commodities. Every other commodity now becomes
a mirror of the linen's value.2 It is thus, that for the first time

1 In Homer, for instance, the value of an article is expressed in a series of dif
ferent things. II. VII., 472-475.

* For this reason, we can speak of the coat-value of the linen when its value is
expressed in coats, or of its corn-value when expressed in corn, and so on.
Every such expression tells us, that what appears in the use-values, coat, corn,
&c., is the value of the linen. " The value of any commodity denoting its relation
in exchange, we may speak of it as ... corn-value, cloth-value, according to the
commodity with which it is compared; and hence there are a thousand different kinds of
value, as many kinds of value as there are commodities in existence, and all are
equally real and equally nominal." (A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Meas
ure and Causes of Value; chiefly in reference to the writings of Mr. Ricardo
and his followers. By the author of " Essays on the Formation, &c., of Opin
ions." London, 1825, p. 39.) S. Bailey, the author of this anonymous work,
a work which in its day created much stir in England, fancied that, by thus
pointing out the various relative expressions of one and the same value, he \^.
proved the impossibility of any determination of the concept of value. How
ever narrow his own views may have been, yet, that he laid his finger on some
serious defects in the Ricardian Theory, is proved by the animosity with which
he was attacked by Ricardo's followers. See the Westminster Review for example.

Commodities. 73

this value shows itself in its true light as a congelation of un-
differentiated human labour. For the labour -that creates it,
now stands expressly revealed, as labour that ranks equally
with every other sort of human labour, no matter what its
form, whether tailoring, ploughing, mining, &c. and no matter,
therefore, whether it is realised in coats, corn, iron, or gold.
The linen, by virtue of the form of its value, now stands in a
social relation, no longer with only one other kind of com
modity, but with the whole world of commodities. As a
commodity, it is a citizen of that world. At the same time,
the interminable series of value equations implies, that as re
gards the value of a commodity, it is a matter of in
difference under what particular form, or kind, of use-value it
appears.

In the first form, 20 yds. of linen =1 coat, it might for ought
that otherwise appears be pure accident, that these two com
modities are exchangeable in definite quantities. In the second
form, on the contrary, we perceive at once the background that
determines, and is essentially different from, this accidental
appearance. The value of the linen remains unaltered in mag
nitude, whether expressed in coats, coffee, or iron, or in num
berless different commodities, the property of as many
different owners. The accidental relation between two in
dividual commodity-owners disappears. It becomes plain, that
it is not the exchange of commodities which regulates the
magnitude of their value; but, on the contrary, that it is the
magnitude of their value which controls their exchange
proportions.

2. The particular Equivalent form.

Each commodity, such as coat, tea, corn, iron, &c., figures in
the expression of value of the linen, as an equivalent, and con
sequently as a thing that is value. The bodily form of each
of these commodities figures now as a particular equivalent
form, one out of many. In the same way the manifold concrete
form, raia nyit of many, In the same way

crete useful kinds of labour, embodied in these different com-

74 Capitalist Production.

modities, rank now as so many different forms of the realisa
tion, or manifestation, of undifferentiated human labour.

3. Defects of the Total or Expanded form of value.

In the first place, the relative expression of value is incom
plete because lie series representing it is interminable. The
chain of which each equation of value is a link, is liable at any
moment to be lengthened by each new kind of commodity that
comes into existence and furnishes the material for a fresh
expression of value. In the second place, it is a many-
coloured mosaic of disparate and independent expressions
of value. And lastly, if, as must be the case, the relative value
of each commodity in turn, becomes expressed in this ex
panded form, we get for each of them a relative value-form,
different in every case, and consisting of an interminable
series of expressions of value. The defects of the expanded
relative-value form are reflected in the corresponding equiva
lent form. Since the bodily form of each single commodity is
one particular equivalent form amongst numberless others, we
have, on the whole, nothing but fragmentary equivalent forms,
each excluding the others. In the same way, also, the special,
concrete, useful kind of labour embodied in each particular
equivalent, is presented only as a particular kind of labour,
and therefore not as an exhaustive representative of human
labour generally. The latter, indeed, gains adequate manifes
tation in the totality of its manifold, particular, concrete forms.
But, in that case, its expression in an infinite series is ever
incomplete and deficient in unity.

The expanded relative value form is, however, nothing but
the sum of the elementary relative expressions or equations of
the first kind, such as

20 yards of linen=l coat

20 yards of linen=10 Ibs. of tea, etc.

Each of these implies the corresponding inverted equation,

1 coat=20 yards of linen
10 Ibs. of tea=20 yards of linen, etc.

In fact, when a person exchanges his linen for many other
commodities, and thus expresses its value in a series of other

Commodities. 75

commodities, it necessarily follows, that the various owners of
the latter exchange them for the linen, and consequently express
the value of their various commodities in one and the same
third commodity, the linen. If then, we reverse the series, 20
yards of linen=i coat or=10 Ibs. of tea, etc., that is to say,
if we give expression to the converse relation already implied
in the series, we get,

C. The General form of value.
1 coat

10 Ibs. of tea
40 Ibs. of coffee
1 quarter of corn

=20 yards of linen

2 ounces of gold
\ a ton of iron
x com. A., etc.

1. The altered character of the form of value.

All commodities now express their value (1) in an element
ary form, because in a single commodity; (2) with unity, be
cause in one and the same commodity. This form of value
is elementary and the same for all, therefore general.

The forms A and B were fit only to express the value of a
commodity as something distinct from its use-value or material
form.

The first form, A, furnishes such equations as the follow
ing: — 1 coat=20 yards of linen, 10 Ibs. of tea=£ ton of iron.
The value of the coat is equated to linen, that of the tea to
iron. But to be equated to linen, and again to iron, is to be as
different as are linen and iron. This form, it is plain, occurs
practically only in the first beginning, when the products of
labour are converted into commodities by accidental and
occasional exchanges.

The second form, B, distinguishes, in a more adequate man
ner than the first, the value of a commodity from its use-value ;
for the value of the coat is there placed in contrast under all
possible shapes with the bodily form of the coat ; it is equated

76 Capitalist Production.

to linen, to iron, to tea, in short, to everything else, only not to
itself, the coat. On the other hand, any general expression of
value common to all is directly excluded ; for, in the equation
of value of each commodity, all other commodities now appear
only under the form of equivalents. The expanded form of
value comes into actual existence for the first time so soon as
a particular product of labour, such as cattle, is no longer
exceptionally, but habitually, exchanged for various other
commodities.

The third and lastly developed form expresses the values of
the whole world of commodities in terms of a single commodity
set apart for the purpose, namely, the linen, and thus represents
to us their values by means of their equality with linen. The
value of every commodity is now, by being equated to linen,
not only differentiated from its own use-value, but from all
other use-values generally, and is, by that very fact, expressed
as that which is common to all commodities. By this form,
commodities are, for the first time, effectively brought into
relation with one another as values, or made to appear *s
exchange values.

The two earlier forms either express the value of each com
modity in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or
in a series of many such commodities. In both cases, it is, SD
to say, the special business of each single commodity to find a:i
expression for its value, and this it does without the help of
the others. These others, with respect to the former, play th3
passive parts of equivalents. The general form of value C,
results from the joint action of the whole world of commodities,
and from that alone. A commodity can acquire a general ex
pression of its value only by all other commodities, simulta
neously with it, expressing their values in the same equivalent ;
and every new commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes
evident that, since the existence of commodities as values is
purely social, this social existence can be expressed by the.
totality of their social relations alone, and consequently
that the form of their value must be a socially recognised
form.

All commodities being equated to linen now appear not only

Commodities. 77

as qualitatively equal as values generally, but also as values
whose magnitudes are capable of comparison. By expressing
the magnitudes of their values in one and the same material,
the linen, those magnitudes are also compared with each other.
For instance, 10 Ibs. of tea =20 yards of linen, and 40 Ibs. of
coffee— 20 yards of linen. Therefore, 10 Ibs. of tea =40 Ibs.
of coffee. In other words, there is contained in 1 Ib. of coffee
only one-fourth as much substance of value — labour — as is con
tained in 1 Ib. of tea.

The general form of relative value, embracing the whole
world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is
excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent
— here the linen — into the universal equivalent. The bodily
form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the
value of all commodities ; it therefore becomes directly
exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance
linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state
of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour
of certain private individuals producing a particular article,
linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character
of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable
equations of which the general form of value is composed,
equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that em
bodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert
weaving into the general form of manifestation of undiffer-
entiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in
the values of commodities is presented not only under its
negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every
concrete form and useful property of actual work, but
its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly.
The general value-form is the reduction of all kinds of
actual labour to their common character of being human
labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour
power.

The general value form, which represents all products of
labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour,
shows by its very structure that it is the social resume of the
world of commodities. That form consequently makes it

78 Capitalist Production.

indisputably evident that in the world of
character possessed ly all labour of being

- ' ' - . ' T '..- : :-:.-. • . v."-:

2. JTi* interdependent development of ike Relative form of
value, and of ike Equivalent form.

The degree of development of the relatirc form of r^loe
corresponds to that of the equivalent form. But we must bear
in mind that the development of the latter is only the expres
sion and result of the development of the former.

Tbe primary or isolated relative form of value of one
commodity converts some other commodity into an isolated
equivalent The expended form of relative value, which is
the expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all
other commodities, endows those other commodities with the
character of particular equivalents differing in kind. And
lastly, a part icula r kind of commodity acquires the character of
universal equivalent, because all other commodities make it the
material in which they uniformly » M|MM« their value.

Hie antagonism LeUiuen the relative form of value and thtf
equivalent form, the two poles of the value form, is developed
concurrently with that form itself.

: m: _ yds ::' ..--:I=:L-? : i:. :".:-;- .;

this antagonism, without as yet fixing it According as we
read this equation forwards or backwards, the parts played by
the linen and the coat are different In the one case the

relative value of the linen is expressed in the coat, in the
other case the relative value of the coat is expressed in the
linen. In this first form of value, therefore, it is difficult to
grasp the polar contrast

Form B shows that only one single commodity at a time can
completely expand its relative value, and that it acquires this
expanded form only because, and in so far as, all other com
modities are, with respect to it, equivalents. Here we cannot
reverse the equation, as we can the equation 20 yds, of linen=
1 coat, without altering its general character, end converting
it from the expanded form of value into the general font of
rsne

: r.

- ::-

i . - ~

-• -

:: —

: ., :•

» « n>

; -r -

• 1

Capitalist Production.

other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed the
universal equivalent form (form C), this is only because and
in so far as it has been excluded from the rest of all other
commodities as their equivalent, and that by their own act.
And from the moment that this exclusion becomes finally
restricted to one particular commodity, from that moment only,
the general form of relative value of the world of commodities
obtains real consistence and general social validity.

The particular commodity, with whose bodily form the
equivalent form is thus socially identified, now becomes the
money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes the special
social function of that commodity, and consequently its social
monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of
the universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in
form B, figure as particular equivalents of the linen, and in
form C, express in common their relative values in linen, this
foremost place has been attained by one in particular — namely,
gold. If, then, in form C we replace the linen by gold, we
get,

D. The Money form.

20 yards of linen =
1 coat =

10 ft of tea

40 lb of coffee ~

1 qr. of corn =

•J a ton of iron =

x commodity A =

In passing from form A to form B, and from the latter to

form C, the changes are fundamental. On the other hand,

there is no difference between forms C and D, except that, in

the latter, gold has assumed the equivalent form in the place

of linen. Gold is in form D, what linen was in form C — the

universal equivalent. The progress consists in this alone, that

the character of direct and universal exchangeability — in other

words, that the universal equivalent form — has now, by social

custom, become finally identified with the substance, gold.

2 ouncee of gold.

Commodities. 81

Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities
only because it was previously, with reference to them, a
simple commodity. Like all other commodities, it was also
capable of serving as an equivalent, either as simple equivalent
in isolated exchanges, or as particular equivalent by the side
of others. Gradually it began to serve, within varying limits,
as universal equivalent. So soon as it monopolises this posi
tion in the expression of value for the world of commodities,
it becomes the money commodity, and then, and not till then,
does form D become distinct from form C, and the general
form of value become changed into the money form.

The elementary expression of the relative value of a single
commodity, such as linen, in terms of the commodity, such as
gold, that plays the part of money, is the price form of that
commodity. The price form of the linen is therefore
20 yards of linen=2 ounces of gold, or, if 2 ounces of gold
when coined are £2, 20 yards of linen=£2.

The difficulty in forming a concept of the money form, con
sists in clearly comprehending the universal equivalent form,
and as a necessary corollary, the general form of value, form C.
The latter is deducible from form B, the expanded form of
value, the essential component element of which, we saw, is
form A, 20 yards of linen— 1 coat or x commodity A— y com
modity B. The simple commodity form is therefore the germ
of the money form.

SECTION 4. — THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES AND THE
SECRET THEREOF.

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and
easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a
very qiieer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and
theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there js..,
nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the
point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying
human wants, or from the point that those properties are the
product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man,
by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished

by nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The

82 Capitalist Production.

form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out
ofjt. Yet, for all that the table continues to be that common,
every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a
commodity, it is changed into something transcendent: It not
only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all
other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its
wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than "table-
turning" ever was.

The mystical character of commodities does not originate,
therefore, in their use-value. Just as little does it proceed
from the nature of the determining factors of value. For, in
the first place, however varied the useful kinds of labour, or
productive activities, may be, it is a physiological fact, that
they are functions of the human organism, and that each su<;h
function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the
expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, &c. Secondly,
with regard to that which forms the ground-work for the quan
titative determination of value, namely, the duration of th:it
expenditure, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that
there is a palpable difference between its quantity and quality.
In all states of society, the labour-time that it costs to produc e
the means of subsistence must necessarily be an object of inter
est to mankind, though not of equal interest in different stages
of development.1 And lastly, from the moment that men io.
any way work for one another, their labour assumes a social
form.

Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product
of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities ?
Clearly from this form itself. The equality of all sorts of
human labour is expressed objectively by their products all
being equally values ; the measure of the expenditure of labour-
power by the duration of that expenditure, takes the form o:'
the quantity of value of the products of labour; and finally,
the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social

1 Among the ancient Germans the unit for measuring land was what could b«
harvested in a day, and was called Tagwerk, Tagwanne (jurnale, or terra jurnalis,
or diornalis), Mannsraaad, &c. (See G. L. von Maurer Einleitung zur Ge*chichte
der Mark—, &c. Verfanung, MOnchen, 1859, p. 189-59.)

Commodities. 83

character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a
social relation between the products.

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because
in it the social character of men's labour appears to them as an
objective character stamped upon the product of that labour;
because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their
own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing
not between themselves, but between the products of their j
labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become /
commodities, social things, whose qualities are at the same time
perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way
the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective
excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of
something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing,
there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing
to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a
physical relation between physical things. But it is different
with commodities. There, the existence of the things qua
commodities, and the value relation between the products of
labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no
connection with their physical properties and with the material
relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social rela
tion between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic
form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find
an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped re
gions of the religious world. In that world the productions of
the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with
life, and entering into relation both with one another and the
human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the
products of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which at
taches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are pro
duced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from
the production of commodities.

This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the fore
going analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social
character of the labour that produces them.

As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities,
only because they are products of the labour of private individ-

Capitalist Production.

uals or groups of individuals who carry on their work inde
pendently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all
these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society.
Since the producers do not come into social contact with each
/'other until they exchange their products, the specific social
I character of each producer's labour does not show itself except
l^in the act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the in
dividual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only
by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes
directly between the products, and indirectly, through them,
between the producers. To the latter, therefore, the relations
connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest ap
pear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work,
but as what they really are, material relations between persons
and social relations between things. It is only by being ex
changed that the products of labour acquire, as values, one uni
form social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence
fas objects of utility. This division of a product into a useful
thing and a value becomes practically important, only when ex
change has acquired such an extension that useful articles are
produced for the purpose of being exchanged, and their char
acter as values has therefore to be taken into account, before
hand, during production. From this moment the labour of the
individual producer acquires socially a two-fold character.
On the one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labour,
satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold its place as part
and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branch of a social
division of labour that has sprung up spontaneously. On the
other hand, it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual
producer himself, only in so far as the mutual exchangeability
of all kinds of useful private labour is an established social
fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each producer
ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalization
of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of
an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to
their common denominator, viz., expenditure of human labour
power or human labour in the abstract. The two-fold social
character of the labour of the individual appears to him, whep

Commodities. 85

reflected in his brain, only under those forms which are im
pressed upon that labour in everyday practice by the exchange
of products. In this way, the character that his own labour
possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the condi
tion, that the product must be not only useful, but useful for
others, and the social character that his particular labour has of
being the equal of all other particular kinds of labour, takes the
form that all the physically different articles that are the pro
ducts of labour, have one common quality, viz, that of having
value.

Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into rela
tion with each other as values, it is not because we see in these
articles the material receptacles of homogeneous human labour.
Quite the contrary ; whenever, by an exchange^ jwe ; jefjuate as
values our different proTTucfs, by that very act, we also equate,
astiuman labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon
them. AVe are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it,1
Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing
what it is. It is jvalue, rather, that convertsjBvery_product
into a social hieroglyphic^ Later on, we try to decipher the
hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social pro
ducts; :cor to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as
much a social product as language. The recent scientific dis
covery, that the products of labour, so far as they are values,
are but material expressions of the human labour spent in
their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the
development of the human race, but, by no means^ dissipates
the mist through which the social character of labour appears
to us to be an objective character of the products themselves.
The fact, that in the particular form of production with which
we are dealing, viz., the production of commodities, the specific
social character of private labour carried on independently,
consists in the equality of every kind of that labour, by virtue
of its being human labour, which character, therefore, assumes

1When, therefore, Galiani says: Value is a relation between persons — "La
Ricchezza e una ragione tra due persone," — he ought to have added: a relation be
tween persons expressed as a relation between things. (Galiani: Delia Moneta, p.
221, V. III. of Custodi's collection of "Scrittori Classici Italian! di Economia
Politicia." Parte Moderna, Milano, 1803.)

86 Capitalist Production.

in the product the form of value — this fact appears to the
producers, notwithstanding the discovery above referred to,
to be just as real and final, as the fact, that, after the discovery
by science of the component gases of air, the atmosphere itself
remained unaltered.

What, first of all, practically concerns producers when they
make an exchange, is the question, how much of some other
product tkey get for their own ? in what proportions the pro
ducts are exchangeable ? When these proportions have, by
custom, attained a certain stability, they appear to result from
the nature of the products, so that, for instance, one ton of iron
and two ounces of gold appear as naturally to be of equal value
as a pound of gold and a pound of iron in spite of their
different physical and chemical qualities appear to be of equal
weight. The character of having value, when once impressed
'upon products, obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and
ire-acting upon each other as quantities of value. These
quantities vary continually, independently of the will, fore
sight and action of the producers. To them, their own social
action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the
producers instead of being ruled by them. It requires a fully
developed production of commodities before, from accumulated
experience alone, the scientific conviction springs up, that all
the different kinds of private labour, which arc carried on in
dependently of each other, and yet as spontaneously developed
branches of the social division of labour, are continually being
reduced to the quantitive proportions in which society re
quires them. And why? Because, in the midst of all the
accidental and ever fluctuating exchange-relations between
the products, the labour-time socially necessary for their pro
duction forcibly asserts itself like an over-riding law of nature.
The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about
/6ur ears.1 The determination of the magnitude of value by
labour-time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent

1 " What are we to think of a law that asserts itself only by periodical revolu
tions? It is just nothing but a law of Nature, founded on the want of knowledge of
those whose action is the subject of it." (Friedrich Engels: Umrisse xu einer
Kritik der Nationa lokonomie," in the "Deutsch-franzdsische Jahrbucher," edited by
Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris, 1844.

Commodities. 87

fluctuations in the relative values of commodities. Its dis
covery, while removing all appearance of mere tcddentality
from the determination of the magnitude of die values of
products, jet in no way alien die mode in which that
determination takes place.

tm* th* forma nf •neial

also, his yi?«t*fo analysis of those forms, tike a course directi y
opposite to that of their actual historical development He
begins, poet faefr"", with the results of die process of develop
ment ready to hand before him. The characters that stamp
products as commodities,and whose establishment is a IJUIBSIIJ
preliminary to the circulation of commodities, hare already
acquired the stability of natural, self -understood forms of social
life, before man seeks to decipher, not their historical character,
for in his eyee they are immutable, but their meaning. Con
sequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities
that alone led to die determination of die magnitude of value,
and it was the common expression of all commodities in money
that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values.
however, just this nlimate money form of the world of
commodities that actually conceals, imd^i of disclosing, die
social character of private labour, and the social relations
-lieipeou the individual producers. When I state that coats or_
hoots stand in a relation to linen, heeanse it is the universal
incarnation of abstract human labour, die absurdity of the
^d:cz:ei- - ; '_• -- ...-- - _ -. . - ; . : - :

coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is
•Jir 5i~e :i:ir ~::i c:".i :: =:>f:. :s :':.i :i.-.:iil ~. _ i'.fz:.
they express die relation betPiieu their own private labour and
the collective labour of society in die same absurd form.

The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like
forms. They are forms of thought expressing with social
~- :.:...:.:- _ :...:. :..- :: .. !:-i:..v

:: yr:iu::::i. -;- . :':.- jr:i_;:::z ::

modities. The wfible myslery of commodhieB, aD the magic

and necromancy that surrounds die products of labour aa long
as they take die form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so
soon aa we come to other forms of

88 Capitalist Production.

Since Robinson Crusoe's experiences are a favorite theme
with political economists,1 let us take a look at him on his
island. Moderate though he be, yet some few wants he has to
satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various
sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fish
ing and hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no ac
count, since they are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks
upon them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of
his work, he knows that his labour, whatever its form, is but
the activity of one and the same Robinson, and consequently,
that it consists of nothing but different modes of human
labour. Necessity itself compels him to apportion his tiire
accurately betwreen his different kinds of work. Whether one
kind occupies a greater space in his general activity than an
other, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case
may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimel
at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and
having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from tha
wreck, commences, like a true-born Briton, to keep a set of
books. His stock-book contains a list of the objects of utility
that belong to him, of the operations necessary for their pro
duction ; and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities
of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the rela
tions between Robinson arid the objects that form this wealth
of his own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be in
telligible without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. Anc
yet those relations contain all that is essential to the deter
mination of value.

. Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson's island
'"bathed in light to the European middle ages shrouded in dark
ness. Here, instead of the independent man, we find every-

1 Even Ricardo has his stories a la Robinson. "He makes the primitive hunter
and the primitive fisher straightway, as owners of commodities, exchange fish and
game in the proportion in which labour-time is incorporated in these exchange
values. On this occasion he commits the anachronism of making these men apply to
the calculation, so far as their implements have to be taken into account, the
annuity tables in current use on the London Exchange in the year 1847. 'The par
allelograms of Mr. Owen' appear to be the only form of society, besides the bour
geois form, with which he was acquainted." (Karl Marx: "Critique," &c.,
p. «0-70.)

Commodities. 89

one dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, lay
men and clergy. Personal dependence here characterises the
social relations of production just as much as it does the other
spheres of life organized on the basis of that production. But
for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground
work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its prod
ucts to assume a fantastic form different from their reality.
They take the shape, in the transactions of society, of services
in kind and payments in kind. Here the particular and natu
ral form of labour, and not, as in a society based on production
of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate
social form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly
measured by time, as commodity-producing labour ; but every
serf knows that what he expends in the service of his lord, is
a definite quantity of his own personal labour-power. The
tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than
his blessing. No matter, then, what we may think of the
parts played by the different classes of people themselves in
this society, the social relations between individuals in the
performance of their labour, appear at all events as their
own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised under
the shape of social relations between the products of labour.

For an example of labour in common or directly associated
labour, we have no occasion to go back to that spontaneously
developed form which we find on the threshold of the history
of all civilized races.1 We have one close at hand in the
patriarchal industries of a peasant family, that produces corn,
cattle, yarn, linen, and clothing for home use. These differ-,
ent articles are, as regards the family, so many products of its
labour, but as between themselves, they are not commodities.
The different kinds of labour, such as tillage, cattle tending,

1 "A ridiculous presumption has latterly got abroad that common property in
its primitive form is specifically a Slavonian, or even exclusively Russian
form. It is the primitive form that we can prove to have existed amongst
Romans, Teutons, and Celts, and even to this day we find numerous examples,
ruins though they be, in India. A more exhaustive study of Asiatic, and
especially of Indian forms of common property, would show how from the different
forms of primitive common property, different forms of its dissolution have been
developed. Thus, for instance, the various original types of Roman and Teutonic
private property are deducible from different forms of Indian common property,"
(Karl Marx. "Critique," &c., p. 29, footnote.)

90 Capitalist Production.

spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result in the
various products, are in themselves, and such as they are,
direct social functions, because functions of the family, which
just as much as a society based on the production of commod
ities, possesses a spontaneously developed system of division
of labour. The distribution of the work within the family,
and the regulation of the labour-time of the several members,
depend as well upon differences of age and sex as upon nat
ural conditions varying with the seasons. The labour-power
of each individual, by its very nature, operates in this case
merely as a definite portion of the whole labour-power of the
family, and therefore, the measure of the expenditure of ir •
dividual labour-power by its duration, appears here by its
very nature as a social character of their labour.

Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a com
munity of free individuals, carrying on their work with tha
means of production in common, in which the labour-power of
all the different individuals is consciously applied as tho
combined labour-power of the community. All the charac
teristics of Robinson's labour are here repeated, but with this
difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Every
thing produced by him was exclusively the result, of his OWE
personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use foi
himself. The total product of our community is a social
product One portion serves as fresh means of production
and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the
members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this
portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode
of this distribution will vary with the productive organization
of the community, and the degree of historical development
attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for
the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that
the share of each individual producer in the means of subsis
tence is determined by his labour-time. Labour-time would,
in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accord
ance with a definite social plan maintains the proper propor
tion between the different kinds of work to be done and the
various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also

Commodities. 91

genres as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne
by each individual and of his share in the part of the total
product destined for individual consumption. The social re
lations of the individual producers, with regard both to their
labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple
and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production
but also to distribution.

The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And
for a society based upon the production of commodities, in
which the producers in general enter into social relations with
one another by treating their products as commodities and
values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour
the standard of homogeneous human labour — for such a soci
ety, Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more espec
ially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, &c.,
is the most fitting form of religion. In the ancient Asiatic
and other ancient modes of production, we find that the con
version of products into commodities, and therefore the con
version of men into producers of commodities, holds a subor
dinate place, which, however, increases in importance as the
primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their
dissolution. Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the
ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus
in the Intermundia, or like Jews in the pores of Polish soci
ety. Those ancient social organisms of production are, aa
compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and trans
parent But they are founded either on the immature devel
opment of man individually, who has not yet severed the um
bilical cord that unites him with his fellow men in a primi
tive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjec
tion. They can arise and exist only when the development of
the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low
stage, and when, therefore, the social relations within the
sphere of material life, between man and man, and between
man and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrow
ness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the
other elements of the popular religions. The religious reflex
of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish,

92 Capitalist Production.

when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none
but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with re
gard to his fellowmen and to nature.

The life-process of society, which is based on the process of
material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it
is treated as production by freely associated men, and is con
sciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.
This, however, demands for society a certain material ground
work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are
the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of
development.

Political economy has indeed analysed, however incom
pletely,1 value and its magnitude, and has discovered what
lies beneath these forms. But it has never once asked the
question why labour is represented by the value of its product

1 The insufficiency of Ricardo's analysis of the magnitude of value, and his an
alysis is by far the best, will appear from the 3rd and 4th book of this work. As
regards values in general, it is the weak point of the classical school of political
economy that it nowhere, expressly and with full consciousness, distinguishes be
tween labour, as it appears in the value of a product and the same labour, as it ap
pears in the use-value of that product. Of course the distinction is practically made
since this school treats labour, at one time under its quantitative aspect, at another
under its qualitative aspect. But it has not the least idea, that when the
difference between various kinds of labour is treated as purely quantitative,
their qualitative unity or equality, and therefore their reduction to abstract human
labour, is implied. For instance, Ricardo declares that he agrees with Destutt
de Tracy in this proposition: "As it is certain that our physical and moral
faculties are alone our original riches, the employment of those faculties, labour
of some kind, is our only original treasure, and it is always from this employment
that all those things are created, which we call riches. . . . It is certain, too,
that all those things only represent the labour which has created them, and if they
have a value, or even two distinct values, they can only derive them from that
(the value) of the labour from which they emanate." (Ricardo, The Principles
of Pol. Econ. 3 Ed. Lond. 1821, p. 334.) We would here only point out that
Ricardo puts his own more profound interpretation upon the words of Destutt.
What the latter really says is, that on the one hand all things which constitute
wealth represent the labour that creates them, but that on the other hand, they
acquire their "two different values" (use-value and exchange-value) from "the
value of labour." He thus falls into the commonplace error of the vulgar econo
mists, who assume the value of one commodity (in this case labour) in order to deter
mine the values of the rest. But Ricardo reads him as if he had said, that labour
(not the value of labour) is embodied both in use-value and exchange-value.
Nevertheless, Ricardo himself pays so little attention to the two-fold character
of the labour which has a two-fold embodiment, that he devotes the whole of his
chapter on " Value and Riches, Their Distinctive Properties," to a laborious ex
amination of the trivialities of a J. B. Say. And at the finish he is quite
astonished to find that Destutt on the one hand agrees with him as to labour being
the source of value, and on the other hand with J. B. Say as to the notion of
value.

Commodities. 93

and labour time by the magnitude of that value.1 These for-^
muke, which bear stamped upon them in unmistakeable let
ters, that they belong to a state of society, in which the process
of production has the mastery over man, instead of being con
trolled by him, such formulae appear to the bourgeois intellect
to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by nature as
productive labour itself. Hence forms of social production
that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated by the bour
geoisie in m'ut- -the same way as the Fathers of the Church
treated pre-Christian religions.2

1 It is one of tUe o/iicf failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded,
by means of ira <n**fvsis of commodities, and, in particular, of their value, in dis
covering that foru under which value becomes exchange-value. Even Adam
Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives of the school, treat the form of value
as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with the inherent nature
of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is en
tirely absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The
value form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also the
most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois production, and stamps
that production as a particular species of social production, and thereby gives
it its special historical character. If then we treat this mode of production as one
eternally fixed by nature for every state of society, we necessarily overlook that
which is the differentia specifica of the value-form, and consequently of the
commodity-form, and of its further developments, money-form, capital-form, &c.
We consequently find that economists, who are thoroughly agreed as to labour time
being the measure of the magnitude of value, have the most strange and con
tradictory ideas of money, the perfected form of the general equivalent. This
is seen in a striking manner when they treat of banking, where the common
place definitions of money will no longer hold water. This led to the rise of
a restored mercantile system (Ganilh, &c.), which sees in value nothing but a
social form, or rather the unsubstantial ghost of that form. Once for all I may
here state, that by classical political economy, I understand that economy which,
since the time of W. Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in
bourgeois society, in contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with appear
ances only, ruminates without ceasing on the materials long since provided by
scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive
phenomena, for bourgeois daily use, but for the rest, confines itself to systema
tizing in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the trite ideas
held by the self-complacent bourgeoisie with regard to their own world, to them
the best of all possible worlds.

2 "The economists have a singular manner of proceeding. There are for them
only two kinds of institutions, those of art and those of nature. Feudal institu
tions are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions.
In this they resemble the theologians, who also establish two kinds of religion
Every religion but their own is an invention of men, while their own religion is
an emanation from God. . . . Thus there has been history, but there is no
longer any." Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, A Reply to 'La Philosophic
de la Misere' by Mr. Proudhon. 1847, p. 100. Truly comical is M. Bastiat, who
imagines that the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. But when
people plunder for centuries, there must always be something at hand for them to
seize; the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced. It would thus appear

94 Capitalist Production.

To what extent some economists are misled by the Fetishism
inherent in commodities, or by the objective appearance of
; the social characteristics of labour, is shown, amongst other
ways, by the dull and tedious quarrel over the part played by
Mature in the formation of exchange value. Since exchange
value is a definite social manner of expressing the amount of
labour bestowed upon an object, Nature has no more to do
with it, than it has in fixing the course of exchange.

The mode of production in which the product takes the
form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is
the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois pro
duction. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date
in history, though not in the same predominating and charac
teristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is
comparatively easy to be seen through. But when we come
to more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity
vanishes. Whence arose the illusions of the monetary sys
tem ? To it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not
represent a social relation between producers, but were nat-

tbat even Greeks and Romans had some process of production, consequently, an
economy, which just as much constituted the material basis of their world, as bour-
geois economy constitutes that of our modern world. Or perhaps Bastiat means,
that a mode of production based on slavery is based on a system of plunder. In
that case he treads on dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle erred in
his appreciation of slave labour, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat be right
{n his appreciation of wage labour? — I seize this opportunity of shortly answering
an objection taken by a German paper in America, to my work, "Critique of
Political Economy, 1859." In the estimation of that paper, my view that each
special mode of production and the social relations corresponding to it, in short,
that the economic structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical
and political superstructure is raised, and to which definite social forms of
thought correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of the
social, political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own
times, in which material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in
which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme,
In the first place it strikes one as an odd thing for any one to suppose that these
well-worn phrases about the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to
anyone else. This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live
on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the
mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and
there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires but a slight
acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for example, to be
aware that its secret history is the history of its landed property. On the other
hand, DOB Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight
erramtry was compatible with aU economical forms of society.

Commodities. 95

ural objects with strange social properties. And modern
economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary
system, does not its superstition come out as clear as noon-day,
whenever it treats of capital ? How long is it since economy ||
discarded the physiocratic illusion, that rents grow out of the I
soil and not out of society ?

But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with yet
another example relating to the commodity form. Could com
modities themselves speak, they would say : Our use-value may
be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects.
What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. Our
natural intercourse as commodities proves it. In the eyes of
each other we are nothing but exchange values. Now listen
how those commodities speak through the mouth of the econo
mist "Value" — (i.e., exchange value) "is a property of things,
riches" — (i.e., use-value) "of man. Value, in this sense, neces
sarily implies exchanges, richea do not." * "Riches" (use-
value) "are the attribute of men, value is the attribute of com
modities. A man or a community is rich, a pearl or a dia
mond is valuable. . . A pearl or a diamond is valuable" as a
pearl or diamond.2 So far no chemist has ever discovered ex
change value either in a pearl or a diamond. The economical
discoverers of this chemical element, who by-the-by0 lay special
claim to critical acumen, find however that the use-value of
objects belongs to them independently of their material pro
perties, while their value, on the other hand, forms a part of
them as objects. What confirms them in this view, is the
peculiar circumstances that the use-value of objects is realised
without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the

1 Observations on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ., particularly relating to
value and to demand and supply. Lond., 1821, p. 16.

•S. Bailey, 1. c-, p. 166.

• The author of " Observations " and S, Bailey accuse Ricardo of converting ex
change value from something relative into something absolute. The opposite is the
fact. He has explained the apparent relation between objects, such as diamonds
and pearls, in which relation they appear as exchange values, and disclosed the
trut relation bidden behind the appearances, namely, their relation to each other
as mere expressions of human labour. If the followers of Ricardo answer Bailey
somewkat rudely, and by no means convincingly, the reason is to be sought in
this, that they were unable to find in Ricardo's own works any key to the hidden
relations awistiag between value amd it* form, exchange v*lu«.

g6 Capitalist Production.

objects and man, while, on the other hand, their value is real
ised only by exchange, that is, by means of a social process.
Who fails here to call to mind our good friend, Dogberry, who
informs neighbour Seacoal, that, "To be a well-favoured man
is the gift of fortune; but reading and writing comes by

nature."

CHAPTER II.

EXCHANGE.

IT is plain that commodities cannot go to market and make
exchanges of their own account. We must, therefore, have
recourse to their guardians, who are also their owners. Com
modities are things, and therefore without power of resistance
against man. If they are wanting in docility he can use force ;
in other words, he can take possession of them.1 In order thst
these objects may enter into relation with -each other as com
modities, their guardians must place themselves in relatio i
to one another, as persons whose will resides in those object' ,
and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriata
the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except bv
means of an act done by mutual consent. They must, there
fore, mutually recognise in each other the right of private
proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses it
self in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed
legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but
the reflex of the real economical relation between the two. It
is this economical relation that determines the subject matter
comprised in each such juridical act.2 The persons exist for

1 In the 12th century, so renowned for its piety, they included amongst com
modities some very delicate things. Thus a French poet of the period enumerate?
amongst the goods to be fund in the market of Landit, not only clothing, shoes,
leather, agricultural implements, &c., but also " femmes folles de leur corps."

* Proudhon begins by taking his ideal of justice, of "justice eternelle," from th«
juridical relations that correspond to the production of commodities: thereby,
it may be noted, he proves, to the consolation of all good citizens, that the
production of commodities is a form of production as everlasting as justice.
Then he turns round and seeks to reform the actual production of commodities,
and the actual legal system corresponding thereto, in accordance with this ideal.

Exchange. 97

one another merely as representatives of, and, therefore, as
owners of, commodities. In the course of our investigation we
shall find, in general, that the characters who appear on the
economic stage are but the personifications of the economical
relations that exist between them.

What chiefly distinguishes a commodity from its owner is
the fact, that it looks upon every other commodity as but the
form of appearance of its own value. A born leveller and a
cynic, it is always ready to exchange not only soul, but body,
with any and every other commodity, be the same more repul
sive than Maritornes herself. The owner makes up for this
lack in the commodity of a sense of the concrete, by his own
five and more senses. His commodity possesses for himself no
immediate use-value. Otherwise, he would not bring it to the
market. It has use-value for others; but for himself its only
direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange
value, and consequently, a means of exchange.1 Therefore,
he makes up his mind to part with it for commodities whose
value in use is of service to him. All commodities are non-use-
values for their owners, and use-values for their non-owners.
Consequently, they must all (.-liMiip- li;m<U But ihi< chungf
of hands is what constitutes their exchange, and the latter
puts them in relation with each other as values, and realises
them as values. Hence commodities must be realised as values
before they can be realised as use-values.

On the other hand, they must show that they are use-
values before they can be realised as values. For the labour
spent upon them counts effectively, only in so far as it is spent

What opinion should we have of a chemist, who, instead of studying the actual
laws of the molecular changes in the composition and decomposition of matter, and
on that foundation solving definite problems, claimed to regulate the composition
and decomposition of matter by means of the "eternal ideas," of "naturalite"
and "affinitd?" Do we really know any more about "usury," when we say it
contradicts "justice eternelle," "dquite eternelle," "mutualite" eternellc," and other
'Veritec e'ternelles" than the fathers of the church did when they said it was incom
patible with "grace eternelle," "foi eternelle," and "la volonte eternelle de Dieu?"

1 " For two-fold is the use of every object. . . . The one is peculiar to the
object as such, the other is not, as a sandal which may be worn, and is also ex
changeable. Both are uses of the sandal, for even he who exchanges the sandal for
the money or food he Is in want of, makes use of the sandal as a sandal. But not
in its natural way. For it has not been made for the sake of being exchanged."
(Aristoteles, de Rep., 1. i. c. 9.)

98 Capitalist Production.

in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour is use
ful for others and its product consequently capable of satisfying
the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange.

Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in ex
change only for those commodities whose use-value satisfies
some want of his. Looked at in this way, exchange is for
him simply a private transaction. On the other hand, he de
sires to realise the value of his commodity, to convert it into
any other suitable commodity of equal value, irrespective of
whether his own commodity has or has not any use-value for
the owner of the other. From this point of view, exchange is
for him a social transaction of a general character. But one
and the same set of transactions cannot be simultaneously for
all owners of commodities both exclusively private and ex
clusively social and general.

Let us look at the matter a little closer. To the owner of a
commodity, every other commodity is, in regard to his own, a
particular equivalent, and consequently his own commodity is
the universal equivalent for all the others. But since this
applies to every owner, there is, in fact, no commodity acting
as universal equivalent, and the relative value of commodities
possesses no general form under which they can be equated as
values and have the magnitude of their values compared. So
far, therefore, they do not confront each other as commodities,
but only as products or use-values. In their difficulties our
commodity-owners think like Faust: "Im Anfang war die
That" They therefore acted and transacted before they
thought. Instinctively they conform to the laws imposed by
the nature of commodities. They cannot bring their com
modities into relation as values, and therefore as commodities,
except by comparing them with some one other commodity
as the universal equivalent. That we saw from the analysis
of a commodity. But a particular commodity cannot become
the universal equivalent except by a social act The social
action therefore of all other commodities, sets apart the par
ticular commodity in which they all represent their values.
Thereby the bodily form of this commodity becomes the form
of the socially recognised universal equivalent. To be the

Exchange. 99

universal equivalent, becomes, by this social process, the
specific function of the commodity thus excluded by the rest.
Thus it becomes — money. "Illi unurn consilium habent et
virtutem et potestatem suam bestise tradunt. Et ne quia
possit emere aut vendere, nisi qui habet characterem aut
nomen bestise, aut numerum nominis ejus." (Apocalypse.)

Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the
exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically
equated to one another and thus by practice converted into
commodities. The historical progress and extension of ex
changes develops the contrast, latent in commodities, between
use-value and value. The necessity for giving an external
expression to this contrast for the purposes of commercial in
tercourse, urges on the establishment of an independent form
of value, and finds no rest until it is once for all satisfied by
the differentiation of commodities into commodities and money.
At the same rate, then, as the conversion of products into
commodities is being accomplished, so also is the conversion of
one special commodity into money.1

The direct barter of products attains the elementary form
of the relative expression of value in one respect, but not in
another. That form is x Commodity A=y Commodity B.
The form of direct barter is x use-value A=y use-value B.2
The articles A and B in this case are not as yet commodities,
but become so only by the act of barter. The first step made
by an object of utility towards acquiring exchange-value
is when it forms a non-use-value for its owner, and that hap
pens when it forms a superfluous portion of some article
required for his immediate wants. Objects in themselves are
external to man, and consequently alienable by him. In order
that this alienation may be reciprocal, it is only necessary for

1 From this we may form an estimate of the shrewdness of the petit-bourgeois
socialism, which, while perpetuating the production of commodities, aims at
abolishing the " antagonism " between money and commodities, and consequently,
since money exists only by virtue of this antagonism, at abolishing money itself.
We might just as well try to retain Catholicism without the Pope. For more
on this point see my work, "Critique of Political Economy," p. 73, ff.

9 So long as, instead of two distinct use-values being exchanged, a chaotic mass
of articles are offered as the equivalent of a single article, which is often the case
with savages, even the direct barter of products is in its first infancy.

ioo Capitalist Production.

men, by a tacit understanding, to treat each other as private
owners of those alienable objects, and by implication as inde
pendent individuals. But such a state of reciprocal indepen
dence has no existence in a primitive society based on pro
perty in common, whether such a society takes the form of a
patriarchal family, an ancient Indian community, or a Peru
vian Inca State. The exchange of commodities, therefore, first
begins on the boundaries of such communities, at their points
of contact with other similar communities, or with members of
the latter. So soon, however, as products once become com
modities in the external relations of a community, they aho,
by reaction, become so in its internal intercourse. The pro
portions in which they are exchangeable are at first quite a
matter of chance. What makes them exchangeable is the
mutual desire of their owners to alienate them. Meantime the
need for foreign objects of utility gradually establishes itself.
The constant repetition of exchange makes it a normal social
act. In the course of time, therefore, some portion at least of
the products of labour must be produced with a special vi.yw
to exchange. From that moment the distinction becones
firmly established between the utility of an object for the pur
poses of consumption, and its utility for the purposes of ex
change. Its use-value becomes distinguished from its ( ex
change value. On the other hand, the quantitative proportion
in which the articles are exchangeable, becomes dependent m
their production itself. Custom stamps them as values with
definite magnitudes.

In the direct barter of products, each commodity is directly
a means of exchange to its owner, and to all other persons in
equivalent, but that only in so far as it has use-value for then.
At this stage, therefore, the articles exchanged do not acquire
a value-form independent of their own use-value, or of the
individual needs of the exchangers. The necessity for a value-
form grows with the increasing number and variety of the-
commodities exchanged. The problem and the means of solu
tion arise simultaneously. Commodity-owners never equate
their own commodities to those of others, and exchange thrm
on a large scale, without different kinds of commodities belor g-

Exchange. 101

ing to different owners being exchangeable for, and equated as
values to, one and the same special article. Such last-men
tioned article, by becoming the equivalent of various other
commodities, acquires at once, though within narrow limits,
the character of a general social equivalent. This character
comes and goes with the momentary social acts that called it
into life. In turns and transiently it attaches itself first to this
and then to that commodity. But with the development of
exchange it fixes itself firmly and exclusively to particular
sorts of commodities, and becomes crystallised by assuming the
money-form. The particular kind of commodity to which it
sticks is at first a matter of accident, Nevertheless there are
two circumstances whose influence is decisive. The money-
form attaches itself either to the most important articles of ex
change from outside, and these in fact are primitive and nat
ural forms in which the exchange-value of home products finds
expression; or else it attaches itself to the object of utility
that forms, like cattle, the. chief portion of indigenous alienable
wealth. Nomad races are the first to develop the money-form,
because all their worldly goods consist of movable objects
and are therefore directly alienable ; and because their mode of
life, by continually bringing them into contact with foreign
communities, solicits the exchange of products. Man has often
made man himself, under the form of slaves, serve as the prim
itive material of money, but has never used land for that
purpose. Such an idea could only spring up in a bourgeois
society already well developed. It dates from the last third of
the 17th century, and the first attempt to put it in practice on a
national scale was made a century afterwards, during the
French bourgeois revolution.

In proportion as exchange bursts its local bonds, and the
value of commodities more and more expands into an embodi
ment of human labour in the abstract, in the same proportion
the character of money attaches itself to commodities that are
by nature fitted to perform the social function of a universal
equivalent. Those commodities are the precious metals.

The truth of the proposition that, "although gold and silver
are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and

IO2 Capitalist Production.

silver/' 1 is shown by the fitness of the physical properties of
these metals for the functions of money.2 Up to this point,
however, we are acquainted only with one function of money,
namely, to serve as the form of manifestation of the value of
commodities, or as the material in which the magnitudes of
their values are socially expressed. An adequate form of
manifestation of value, a fit embodiment of abstract, undiffer-
entiated, and therefore equal human labour, that material
alone can be whose every sample exhibits the same uniform
qualities. On the other hand, since the difference between the
magnitudes of value is purely quantitative, the money con-
modity must be susceptible of merely quantitative differences,
must therefore be divisible at will, and equally capable of beirg
re-united. Gold and silver possess these properties by nature.

The use-value of the money commodity becomes twofold.
In addition to its special use-value as a commodity (gold,
for instance, serving to stop teeth, to form the raw material of
articles of luxury, &c.), it acquires a formal use-value, origina
ting in its specific social function.

Since all commodities are merely particular equivalents of
money, the latter being their universal equivalent, they, with
regard to the latter as the universal commodity, play the par s
of particular commodities.8

We have seen that the money-form is but the reflex, throw a
upon one single commodity, of the value relations between all
the rest. That money is a commodity 4 is therefore a new dh-

1 Karl Marx, L c. p. 212. "I metalli. . . naturalmcnte moneta," (Galiar i.
"Delia moneta" in Custodi's Collection: Parte Moderna t. iii.).

8 For further details on this subject see in my work cited above, the chapter en
" The precious metals."

'"II danaro e la merce universale (Verri, 1. c., p. 16).

* "Silver and gold themselves (which we may call by the general name of
bullion), are . . . commodities . . . rising and falling in ... value. . . Bullio i,
then, may be reckoned to be of higher value where the smaller weight will purcha^
the greatest quantity of the product or manufacture of the countrey," &c. ("A
Discourse of the General Notions of Money, Trade, and Exchange, as they stard
in relations to each other." By a Merchant. Lond., 1695, p. 7.) "Silver ard
gold, coined or uncoined, though they are used for a measure of all other things,
are no less a commodity than wine, oyl, tobacco, cloth, or stuffs." (" A Discourse
concerning Trade, and that in particular of the East Indies," &c. London, 168 J, .
p. 2.) "The stock and riches of the kingdom cannot properly be confined :o
money, nor ought gold and silver to be excluded from being merchandize." ("A

Exchange. 103

covery only for those who, when they analyse it, start from its
fully developed shape. The act of exchange gives to the com
modity converted into money, not its value, but its specific
value-form. By confounding these two distinct things some
writers have been led to hold that the value of gold and silver
is imaginary.1 The fact that money can, in certain functions,
be replaced by mere symbols of itself, gave rise to that other
mistaken notion, that it is itself a mere symbol. Nevertheless
under this error lurked a presentiment that the money-form of
an object is not an inseparable part of that object, but is simply
the form under which certain social relations manifest them
selves. In this sense every commodity is a symbol, since, in so
far as it is value, it is only the material envelope of the human
labour spent upon it.2 But if it be declared that the social
characters assumed by objects, or the material forms assumed
by the social qualities of labour under the regime of a definite
mode of production, are mere symbols, it is in the same breath
also declared that these characteristics are arbitrary fictions
sanctioned by the so-called universal consent of mankind. This

Treatise concerning the East India Trade being a most profitable Trade." Lon
don, 1680, Reprint 1696, p. 4.)

1 "L'oro c 1'argento hanno valore come metalli anteriore all' esser moneta."
(Galiani, I.e.). Locke says, " The universal consent of mankind gave to silver, on
account of its qualities which made it suitable for money, an. imaginary value."
Law, on the other hand, " How could different nations give an imaginary value
to any single thing ... or how could this imaginary value have maintained itself?"
But the following shows how little he himself understood about the matter: " Sil
ver was exchanged in proportion to the value in use it possessed, consequently in
proportion to its real value. By its adoption as money it received an additional
value (une valeur additionelle)" (Jean Law: "Considerations sur le numeraire
et le commerce" in E. Daire's Edit, of "Economistes Financiers du XVIII. siecle.,"
p. 470).

* L' Argent en (des denrees) est le signe." (V. de Forbonnais: "Elements du
Commerce, Nouv. Edit. Leyde, 1776," t. II., p. 143.) "Comme signe il est attire
par les denrees." (I.e., p. 155). " L'argent est un signe d'une chose et la
represente." (Montesquieu: "Esprit des Lois," Oeuvres, Lond. 1767, t. II., p. 2.)
"L'argent n'est pas simple signe, car il est lui-meme richesse; il ne represente
pas les valeurs, il les e"quivaut." (Le Trosne, I.e., p. 910.) "The notion of value
contemplates the valuable article as a mere symbol; the article counts not for what
it is, but for what it is worth." (Hegel, I.e., p. 100.) Lawyers started long
before economists the idea that money is a mere symbol, and that the value of the
precious metals is purely imaginary. This they did in the sycophantic service of
the crowned heads, supporting the right of the latter to debase the coinage, during
the whole of the middle ages, by the traditions of the Roman Empire and the
conceptions of money to be found in the Pandects. "Qu' aucun puisse ni doive
faire doute," says an apt scholar of theirs, Philip of Valois, in a decree of
1346, " que 4 nous et a notre majeste royale n' appartiennent seulement. . . le

IO4 Capitalist Production.

suited the mode of explanation in favour during the 18th
century. Unable to account for the origin of the puzzling
forms assumed by social relations between man and man, peo
ple sought to denude them of their strange appearance by
ascribing to them a conventional origin.

It has already been remarked above that the equivalent form
of a commodity does not imply the determination of the magni
tude of its value. Therefore, although we may be aware that
gold is money, and consequently directly exchangeable for all
other commodities, yet that fact by no means tells how much
10 Ibs., for instance, of gold is worth. Money, like every other
commodity, cannot express the magnitude of its value except
relatively in other commodities. This value is determined by
the labour-time required for its production, and is expressed by
the quantity of any other commodity that costs the same
amount of labour-time,1 Such quantitative determination of
its relative value takes place at the source of its production by
means of barter. When it steps into circulation as money, its
value is already given. In the last decades of the 17th cen
tury it had already been shown that money is a commodity,
but this step marks only the infancy of the analysis. The
difficulty lies, not in comprehending that money is a commo
dity, but in discovering how, why and by what means a com
modity becomes money.2

meatier, Ic fait, l'e"tat, la provision et toute 1'ordonnancc des monnaies, de dormer
tel cours, et pour tel prix comme il nous plait et bon nous semble." It waf
a maxim of the Roman Law that the value of money was fixed by decree of the
emperor. It was expressly forbidden to treat money as a commodity. " Pecunias
vero nulli emere fas erit, nam in usu publico constitutas oportet non esse
ntercem." Some good work on this question has been done by G. F. Pagnini:
"Saggio sopra il giusto pregio delle cose, 1751"; Custodi "Parte Moderna," t.
II. In the second part of his work Pagnini directs his polemics especially against
the lawyers.

1 " If a man can bring to London an ounce of Silver out of the Earth in
Peru, in the same time that he can produce a bushel of Corn, then the one is the
natural price of the other; now, if by reason of new or more easie mines a man
can procure two ounces of silver as easily as he formerly did one, the corn will
be as cheap at ten shillings the bushel as it was before at five shillings, caeteria
paribus." William Petty: "A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions." Lond., 1662,
p. 32.

* The learned Professor Roscher, after first informing us that " the false defini
tions of money may be divided into two main groups: those which make it more,
and those which make it less, than a commodity," gives us a long and very mixed
catalogue of works on the nature of money, from which it appears that he has

Exchange. 105

We have already seen, from the most elementary expres
sion of value, x commodity A— y commodity B, that the object
in which the magnitude of the value of another object is repre
sented, appears to have the equivalent form independently of
this relation, as a social property given to it by Nature. W v
followed up this false appearance to its final establishment,
which is complete so soon as the universal equivalent form
becomes identified with the bodily form of a particular com
modity, and thus crystallised into the money-form. What
appears to happen is, not that gold becomes money, in conse
quence of all other commodities expressing their values in it,
but, on the contrary, that all other commodities universally
express their values in gold, because it is money. The inter
mediate steps of the process vanish in the result and leave no
trace behind. Commodities find their own value already com
pletely represented, without any initiative on their part, in
another commodity existing in company with them. These
objects, gold and silver, just as they come out of the bowels of
the earth, are forthwith the direct incarnation of all human
labour. Hence the magic of money. In the form of society
now under consideration, the behaviour of men in the social
process of production is purely atomic. Hence their relations
to each other in production assume a material character inde
pendent of their control and conscious individual action.
These facts manifest themselves at first by products as a gen
eral rule taking the form of commodities. We have seen how
the progressive development of a society of commodity-pro
ducers stamps one privileged commodity with the character of
money. Hence the riddle presented by money is but the riddle

not the remotest idea of the real history of the theory; and then he moralises
thus: " For the rest, it is not to be denied that most of the later economists do not
bear sufficiently in mind the peculiarities that distinguish money from other com
modities" (it is then, after all, either more or less than a commodity!) . . . "So
far, the semi-mercantilist reaction of Ganilh is not altogether without foundation."
(Wilhelm Roscher: " Die Grundlagen der Nationaloekonomie," 3rd Edn., 1858, pp.
277-210) Morel less! not sufficiently 1 so far! not altogether! What clearness and
precision of ideas and language I And such eclectic professorial twaddle is mod
estly baptised by Mr. Roscher, " the anatomico-physiological method " of political
economy! One discovery however, he must have credit for, namely, that money is
"a pleasant commodity."

106 Capitalist Production.

presented by commodities; only it now strikes us in its most
glaring form.

CHAPTEK III.

MONEY, OR THE CIRCULATION OF COMMODITIES.
SECTION 1. THE MEASURE OF VALUES.

THROUGHOUT this work, I assume, for the sake of simplicity,
gold as the money-commodity.

The first chief function -of money is to supply commodities
with the material for the expression of their values, or to re
present their values as magnitudes of the same denomination,
qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. It thus
serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of
this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excel
lence, become money.

It is not money that renders commodities commensurable.
Just the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are
realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that
their values can be measured by one and the same special com
modity, and the latter be converted into the common measure
of their values, i.e., into money. Money as a measure of
value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be as
sumed by that measure of value which is immanent in com
modities, labour-time.1

The expression of the value of a commodity in gold — x

1 The question — Why docs not money directly represent labour-time, so that a
piece of paper may represent, for instance, x hour's labour, is at bottom the same
as the question why, given the production of commodities, must products take the
form of commodities? This is evident, since their taking the form of commodities
implies their differentiation into commodities and money. Or, why cannot pri
vate labour — labour for the account of private individuals — be treated as its oppo
site, immediate social labour? I have elsewhere examined thoroughly the Utopian
idea of "labour-money" in a society founded on the production of commodities
(1. c., p. 61, seq.). On this point I will only say further, that Owen's " labour-
money," for instance, is no more "money" than a ticket for the theatre. Owen
presupposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely in
consistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely
evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his
right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption. But
it never enters into Owen's head to presuppose the production of commodities,
and at the same time, by juggling with money, to try to evade the necessary con
ditions of that production.

'Money f or the Circulation of Commodities. 107

commodity A=y money-commodity — is its money-form or
price. A single equation, such as 1 ton of iron=2 ounces of
gold, now suffices to express the value of the iron in a socially
valid manner. There is no longer any need for this equation
to figure as a link in the chain of equations that express the
values of all other commodities, because the equivalent com
modity, gold, now has the character of money. The general
form of relative value has resumed its original shape of simple
or isolated relative value. On the other hand, the expanded
expression of relative value, the endless series of equations, has
now hecome the form peculiar to the relative value of the
money-commodity. The series itself, too, is now given, and
has social recognition in the prices of actual commodities. We
have only to read the quotations of a price-list backwards, to
find the magnitude of the value of money expressed in all sorts
of commodities. But money itself has no price. In order to
put it on an equal footing with all other commodities in this
respect, we should be obliged to equate it to itself as its own
equivalent.

The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form
of value generally, a form quite distinct from their palpable
bodily form; it is, therefore, a purely ideal or mental form.
Although invisible, the value of iron, linen and corn has actual
existence in these very articles : it is ideally made perceptible
by their equality with gold, a relation that, so to say, exists
only in their own heads. Their owner must, therefore, lend
them his tongue, or hang a ticket on them, before their prices
can be communicated to the outside world.1 Since the ex
pression of the value of commodities in gold is a merely ideal

1 Savages and half -civilised races use the tong differently. Captain Parry says
of the inhabitants on the west coast of Baffin's Bay: "In this case (he refers to
barter) they licked it (the thing represented to them) twice to their tongues, after
which they seemed to consider the bargain satisfactorily concluded." In the same
way, the Eastern Esquimaux licked the articles they received in exchange. If the
tongue is thus used in the North as the organ of appropriation, no wonder that, in
the South, the stomach serves as the organ of accumulated property, and that a
Kaffir estimates the wealth of a man by the size of his belly. That the Kaffirs
know what they are about is shown by the following: at the same time that the
official British Health Report of 1864 disclosed the deficiency of fat-forming food
among a large part of the working class, a certain Dr. Harvey (not, however, the
celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood), made a good thing by adver
tising recipes for reducing the superfluous fat of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy.

io8 Capitalist Production.

act, we may use for this purpose imaginary or ideal money.
Every trader knows, that he is far from having turned his
goods into money, when he has expressed their value in a price
or in, imaginary money, and that it does not require the least
bit of real gold, to estimate in that metal millions of pounds*
worth of goods. When, therefore, money serves as a measure
of value, it is employed only as imaginary or ideal money.
This circumstance has given rise to the wildest theories.1 But,
although the money that performs the functions of a measure
of value is only ideal money, price depends entirely upon the
actual substance that is money. The value, or in other word»,
the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of iron, is
expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the money-
commodity as contains the same amount of labour as the iror .
According, therefore, as the measure of value is gold, silver, or
copper, the value of the ton of iron will be expressed by very
different prices, or will be represented by very different quan
tities of those metals respectively.

If, therefore, two different commodities, such as gold and
silver, are simultaneously measures of value, all commodities
have two prices — one a gold-price, the other a silver-price.
These exist quietly side by side, so long as the ratio of tEs
value of silver to that of gold remains unchanged, say, at 15 : 1.
Every change in their ratio disturbs the ratio which exists
between the gold-prices and the silver-prices of commodities,
and thus proves, by facts, that a double standard of value h
inconsistent with the functions of a standard.2

1See Karl Marx: "Critique, etc., chapter II. B., Theories of the Unit of Meas
ure of Money," p. 01, ff.

'"Wherever gold and silver have by law been made to perform the function of
money or of a measure of value side by side, it has always been tried, but in
vain, to treat them as one and the same material. To assume that there is a:i
invariable ratio between the quantities of gold and silver in which a given quantity
of labour-time is incorporated, is to assume, in fact, that gold and silver are o"
one and the same material, and that a given mass of the less valuable metal,
silver, is a constant fraction of a given mass of gold. From the reign of Edward
III. to the time of George II., the history of money in England consists of on«-
long series of perturbations caused by the clashing of the legally fixed ratio be
tween the values of gold and silver, with the fluctuations in their real values. A:
one time gold was too high, at another, silver. The metal that for the time beinfc
was estimated below its value, was withdrawn from circulation, melted and ex
ported. The ratio between the two metals was then again altered by law, but
the new nominal ratio soon came into conflict again with the real one. In our owi

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 109

Commodities with definite prices present themselves under
the form : a commodity A=x gold ; b commodity B=z gold ;
c commodity C=y gold, &c., where a, b, c, represent definite
quantities of the commodities A, B, C and x, z, y, definite
quantities of gold. The values of these commodities are,
therefore, changed in imagination into so many different quan
tities of gold. Hence, in spite of the confusing variety of
the commodities themselves, their values become magnitudes
of the same denomination, gold-magnitudes. They are now
capable of being compared with each other and measured, and
the want becomes technically felt of comparing them with
some fixed quantity of gold as a unit measure. This unit, by
subsequent division into aliquot parts, becomes itself the
standard or scale. Before they become money, gold, silver,
and copper already possess such standard measures in their
standards of weight, so that, for example, a pound weight,
while serving as the unit, is, on the one hand, divisible into
ounces, and, on the other, may be combined to make up
hundredweights.1 It is owing to this that, in all metallic
currencies, the names given to the standards of money or of
price were originally taken from the pre-existing names of the
standards of weight.

As measure of value and as standard of price, money has two

times, the slight and transient fall in the value of gold compared with silver, which
was a consequence of the Indo-Chinese demand for silver, produced on a far
more extended scale in France the same phenomena, export of silver, and its ex
pulsion from circulation by gold. During the years 1855, 1856 and 1867, the excess
in France of gold-imports over gold exports amounted to £41,580,000, while the
excess of silver-exports over silver-imports was £14,704,000. In fact, in those
countries in which both metals are legally measures of value, and therefore both
legal tender, so that everyone has the option of paying in either metal, the metal
that rises in value is at a premium, and, like every other commodity, measures its
price in the over-estimated metal which alone serves in reality as the standard
of value. The result of all experience and history with regard to this question is
simply that, where two commodities perform by law the functions of a measure of
value, in practice one alone maintains that position." (Karl Marx, 1. c. pp. 90-91.)
1 The peculiar circumstance, that while the ounce of gold serves in England as
the unit of the standard of money, the pound sterling does not form an aliquot
part of it, has been explained as follows: "Our coinage was originally adapted
to the employment of silver only, hence, an ounce of silver can always be divided
into a certain adequate number of pieces of coin; but as gold was introduced
at a later period into a coinage adapted only to silver, an ounce of gold cannot be
coined into an aliquot number of pieces." Maclaren, "A Sketch of the History
of the Currency." London, 1858, p. 16.

no Capitalist Production.

entirely distinct functions to perform. It is the measure
of value inasmuch as it is the socially recognised incarnation
of human labour; it is the standard of price inasmuch as it is
a fixed weight of metal. As the measure of value Jjb^serves to
convert the values of all the manifold commodities into prices,
into imaginary quantities of gold ; as the standard of price it
measures those quantities of gold. The measure of values
measures commodities considered as values; the standard of
price measures, on the contrary, quantities of gold by a unit
quantity of gold, not the value of one quantity of gold by the
weight of another. In order to make gold a standard of price,
a certain weight must be fixed upon as the unit. In this case,
as in all cases of measuring quantities of the same denomina
tion, the establishment of an unvarying unit of measure is all-
important. Hence, the less the unit is subject to variation, so
much the better does the standard of price fulfill its office. But
only in so far as it is itself a product of labour, and, therefore),
potentially variable in value, can gold serve as a measure of
value.1,

It is, in the first place, quite clear that a change in the valua
of gold does not, in any way, affect its function as a standard
of price. No matter how this value varies, the proportions
between the values of different quantities of the metal remain
constant. However great the fall in its value, 12 ounces of
gold still have 12 times the value of 1 ounce; and in prices,
the only thing considered is the relation between different
quantities of gold. Since, on the other hand, no rise or fall in
the value of an ounce of gold can alter its weight, no alteration
can take place in the weight of its aliquot parts. Thus gold
always renders the same service as an invariable standard of
price, however much its value may vary.

In the second place, a change in the vajue of gold does no!;
interfere with its functions as a measure of value. Thu
change affects all commodities simultaneously, and, therefore,
cceterip paribus, leaves their relative values inter sef unaltered.

1 With English writers the confusion between measure of value and standard of
price (standard of value) is indescribable. Their functions, as well as tb«»ir names
are constantly interchanged.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. in

although those values are now expressed in higher or lower
gold-prices.

Just as when we estimate the value of any commodity by
a definite quantity of the use-value of some other commodity,
so in estimating the value of the former in gold, we assume
nothing more than that the production of a given quantity of
gold costs, at the given period, a given amount of labour. As
regards the fluctuations of prices generally, they are subject to
the laws of elementary relative value investigated in a former
chapter.

A general rise in the prices of commodities can result only,
either from a rise in their values — the value of money remain
ing constant — or from a fall in the value of money, the values
of commodities remaining constant On the other hand, a
general fall in prices can result only, either from a fall in the
values of commodities — the value of money remaining con
stant — or from a rise in the value of money, the values of
commodities remaining constant. It therefore by no means
follows, that a rise in the value of money necessarily implies a
proportional fall in the prices of commodities ; or that a fall in
the value of money implies a proportional rise in prices.
Such change of price holds good only in the case of com
modities whose value remains constant. With those, for ex
ample whose value rises, simultaneously with, and propor
tionally to, that of money, there is no alteration in price.
And if their value rise either slower or faster than that of
money, the fall or rise in their prices will be determined by
the difference between the change in their value and that of
money ; and so on.

Let us now go back to the consideration of the price-form.

By degrees there arises a discrepancy between the current
money names of the various weights of the precious metal
figuring as money, and the actual weights which those names
originally represented. This discrepancy is the result of his
torical causes, among which the chief are: — (1) The im
portation of foreign money into an imperfectly developed
community. This happened in Rome in its early days, where
gold and silver coins circulated at first as foreign commodities.

112 Capitalist Production.

The names of these foreign coins never coincide with those of
the indigenous weights. (2) As wealth increases, the less
precious metal is thrust out by the more precious from its place
as a measure of value, copper by silver, silver by gold, however
much this order of sequence may be in contradiction with
poetical chronology.1 The word pound, for instance, was the
money-name given to an actual pound weight of silver. When
gold replaced silver as a measure of value, the same name was
applied according to the ratio between the values of silver and
gold, to perhaps 1-1 5th of a pound of gold. The word pound,
as a money-name, thus becomes differentiated from the same
word as a weight-name.2 (3) The debasing of money carried
on for centuries by kings and princes to such an extent that, of
the original weights of the coins, nothing in fact remained but
the names.

These historical causes convert the separation of the money-
name from the weight-name into an established habit with the
community.3 Since the standard of money is on the one hand
purely conventional, and must on the other hand find general
acceptance, it is in the end regulated by law. A given weight
of one of the precious metals, an ounce of gold, for instance,
becomes officially divided into aliquot parts, with legally be
stowed names, such as pound, dollar, &c. These aliquot parts,
which henceforth serve as units of money, are then sub
divided into other aliquot parts with legal names, such as
shilling, penny, &c.4 But, both before and after these
divisions are made, a definite weight of metal is the standard
of metallic money. The sole alteration consists in the sub
division and denomination.

1 Moreover, it has not general historical validity.

3 It is thus that the pound sterling in English denotes less than one-third of its
original weight; the pound Scot, before the union, only l-36th; the French livre,
l-74th; the Spanish maravedi, less than l-1000th; and the Portuguese rei a still
smaller fraction.

* "Le monete le quali oggi sono ideali sono le piu antiche d'ogni nazione, e tutte
furono un tempo reali, e perche erano reali con esse si contava." (Galiam:
Delia moneta, 1. c., p. 153.)

* David Urquhart remarks in his "Familiar Words" on the monstrosity (I)
that now-a-days a pound (sterling), which is the unit of the English standard
of money, is equal to about a quarter of an ounce of gold. "This is falsify
ing a measure, not establishing a standard." He sees in this " false denomination "
of the weight of gold, as in everything else, the falsifying hand of civilisation.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 113

The prices, or quantities of gold, into which the values of
commodities are ideally changed, are therefore now expressed
in the names of coins, or in the legally valid names of the sub
divisions of the gold standard. Hence, instead of saying: A
quarter of wheat is worth an ounce of gold ; we say, it is worth
£3 17s. lOJd. In this way commodities express by their prices
how much they are worth, and money serves as money of
account whenever it is a question of fixing the value of an
article in its money-form.1

The name of a thing is something distinct from the qualities
of that thing. I know nothing of a man, by knowing that his
name is Jacob. In the same way with regard to money, every
trace of a value-relation disappears in the names pound, dollar,
franc, ducat, &c. The confusion caused by attributing a hidden
meaning to these cabalistic signs is all the greater, because
these money-names express both the values of commodities,
and, at the same time, aliquot parts of the weight of the metal
that is the standard of money.2 On the other hand, it is
absolutely necessary that value, in order that it may be distin
guished from the varied bodily forms of commodities, should
assume this material and unmeaning, but, at the same time,
purely social form.3

1 When Anacharsis was asked for what purposes the Greeks used money, he re
plied, " For reckoning." (Athen. Deipn. 1. "iv. 49 v. 2. ed Schweighauser, 1802.)

* " Owing to the fact that money, when serving as the standard of price, appears
under the same reckoning names as do the prices of commodities, and that
therefore the sum of £3 17s. 10 l/2d. may signify on the one hand an ounce weight
of gold, and on the other, the value of a ton of iron, this reckoning name of money
has been called its mint-price. Hence there sprang up the extraordinary notion,
that the value of gold is estimated in its own material, and that, in contra-distinc-
tion to all other commodities, its price is fixed by the State. It was erroneously
thought that the giving of reckoning names to definite weights of gold, is the
same thing as fixing the value of those weights." (Karl Marx. 1. c., p. 89.)

3 See "Theories of the Unit of Measure of Money" in "Critique of Political
Economy," p. 91, ff. The fantastic notions about raising or lowering the mint-
price of money by transferring to greater or smaller weights of gold or silver
the names already legally appropriated to fixed weights of those metals; such no
tions, at least in those cases in which they aim, not at clumsy financial operations
against creditors, both public and private, but at economical quack remedies have
been so exhaustively treated by Wm. Petty in his " Quantulumcunque concerning
money: To the Lord Marquis of Halifax, 1682," that even his immediate followers,
Sir Dudley North and John Locke, not to mention later ones, could only dilute
him. " If the wealth of a nation," he remarks, " could be decupled by a proclama
tion, it were strange that such proclamations have not long since been made by our
Governors." (1. c., p. 86.)

H4 Capitalist Production.

Price is the money-name of the labour realised in a commo
dity. Hence the expression of the equivalence of a commodity
with the sum of money constituting its price, is a tautology,1
just as in general the expression of the relative value of a
commodity is a statement of the equivalence of two commod
ities. But although price, being the exponent of the magni
tude of a commodity's value, is the exponent of its exchange-
ratio with money, it does not follow that the exponent of this
exchange-ratio is necessarily the exponent of the magnitude of
the commodity's value. Suppose two equal quantities of social
ly necessary labour to be respectively represented by 1 quarte:*
of wheat and £2 (nearly \ oz. of gold), £2 is the expression in
money of the magnitude of the value of the quarter of wheat,
or is its price. If now circumstances allow of this price bein^;
raised to £3, or compel it to be reduced to £1, then although
£1 and £3 may be too small or too great properly to express
the magnitude of the wheat's value, nevertheless they are iU
prices, for they are, in the first place, the form under which its
value appears, i.e., money; and in the second place, the ex
ponents of its exchange-ratio with money. If the conditions
of production, in other words, if the productive power oi
labour remain constant, the same amount of social labour-time
must, both before and after the change in price, be expended in
the reproduction of a quarter of wheat. This circumstance de
pends, neither on the will of the wheat producer, nor on that
of the owners of other commodities.

Magnitude of value expresses a relation of social production,
it expresses the connection that necessarily exists between a
certain article and the portion of the total labour-time of society
required to produce it. As soon as magnitude of value is con
verted into price, the above necessary relation takes the shape
of a more or less accidental exchange-ratio between a single
commodity and another, the money-commodity. But this ex
change-ratio may express either the real magnitude of that
commodity's value, or the quantity of gold deviating from that
value, for which, according to circumstances, it may be parted

1 " Ou bien, il faut consentir a dire qu'une valeur d'un million en argent vaut
plus qu'une valeur egale en marchandises." (Le Trosne 1. c. p. 919), which
amounts to saying, "qu'une valeur vaut plus qu'une valeur egale."

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 115

with. The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity
between price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the
former from the latter; is inherent in the price-form itself.
This is no defect, but, on the contrary, admirably adapts the
price-form to a mode of production whose inherent laws impose
themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless irregulari
ties that compensate one another.

The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the
possibility of a quantitative incongruity between magnitude
of value and price, i.e., between the former and its expression
in money, but it may also conceal a qualitative inconsistency, so
much so, that, although money is nothing but the value-form of
commodities, price ceases altogether to express value. Objects
that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience,
honour, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their hold
ers, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of com
modities. Hence an object may have a price without having
value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quan
tifies in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-
form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real
value-relation ; for instance, the price of uncultivated land,
which is without value, because no human labour has been in
corporated in it.

Price, like relative value in general, expresses the value of
a commodity (e.g., a ton of iron), by stating that a given quan
tity of the equivalent (e.g., an ounce of gold), is directly ex
changeable for iron. But it by no means states the converse,
that iron is directly exchangeable for gold. In order, there
fore, that a commodity may in practice act effectively as ex
change value, it must quit its bodily shape, must transform it
self from mere imaginary into real gold, although to the com
modity such transubstantiation may be more difficult than to
the Hegelian "concept," the transition from "necessity" to
"freedom," or to a lobster the casting of his shell, or to Saint
Jerome the putting off of the old Adam.1 Though a commod-

1 Jerome had to wrestle hard, not only in his youth with the bodilj flesh, as is
shown by his fight in the desert with the handsome women of his imagination, but
also in his old age with the spiritual flesh. " I thought," he says, " I was in the
Spirit before the Judge of the Universe." "Who art thou?" asked a voice. "I am

n6 Capitalist Production.

ity may, side by side with its actual form (iron, for in
stance), take in our imagination the form of gold, yet it cannot
at one and the same time actually be both iron and gold. To
fix its price, it suffices to equate it to gold in imagination. But
to enable it to render to its owner the service of a universal
equivalent, it must be actually replaced by gold. If the owner
of the iron were to go to the owner of some other commodity
offered for exchange, and were to refer him to the price of the
iron as proof that it was already money, he would get the same
answer as St. Peter gave in heaven to Dante, when the latter

recited the creed —

" Assai bene £ trascorsa
D'esta moneta gia la lega e'l peso,
Ma dimmi se tu Thai nella tua borsa."

A price therefore implies both that a commodity is exchange
able for money, and also that it must be so exchanged. On
the other hand, gold serves as an ideal measure of value, only
because it has already, in the process of exchange, established
itself as the money-commodity. Under the ideal measure of
values there lurks the hard cash,

SECTION 2. THE MEDIUM OF CIRCULATION.

a. The Meiamorphosis of Commodities.

We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of commodi
ties implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions.
The differentiation of commodities into commodities and
money does not sweep away these inconsistencies, but develops
a modus vivendi, a form in which they can exist side by side.
This is generally the way in which real contradictions are
reconciled. For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one
body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the
same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a
form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go
on, at the same time reconciles it.

In so far as exchange is a process, by which commodities are
transferred from hands in which they are non-use-values, to

a Christian." "Thou liest," thundered back the great Judge, "thou art nought but
a Ciceronian."

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 117

hands in which they become use-values, it is a social circula
tion of matter. The product of one form of useful labour
replaces that of another. When once a commodity has found
a resting-place, where it can serve as a use-value, it falls out
of the sphere of exchange into that of consumption. But the
former sphere alone interests us at present. We have, there
fore, now to consider exchange from a formal point of view ; to
investigate the change of form or metamorphosis of commodi
ties which effectuates the social circulation of matter.

The comprehension of this change of form is, as a rule, very
imperfect. The cause of this imperfection is, apart from indis
tinct notions of value itself, that every change of form in a
commodity results from the exchange of two commodities, an
ordinary one and the money-commodity. If we keep in view the
material fact alone that a commodity has been exchanged for gold
we overlook the very thing that we ought to observe — namely,
what has happened to the form of the commodity. We overlook
the facts that gold, when a mere commodity, is not money, and
that when other commodities express their prices in gold, this
gold is but the money-form of those commodities themselves.

Commodities, first of all, enter into the process of exchange
just as they are. The process then differentiates them into
commodities and money, and thus produces an external oppo
sition corresponding to the internal opposition inherent in
them, as being at once use-values and values. Commodities as
use-values now stand opposed to money as exchange value.
On the other hand, both opposing sides are commodities,
unities of use-value and value. But this unity of differences
manifests itself at two opposite poles, and at each pole in an
opposite way. Being poles they are as necessarily opposite as
they are connected. On the one side of the equation we have
an ordinary commodity, which is in reality a use-value. Its
value is expressed only ideally in its price, by which it is
equated to its opponent, the gold, as to the real embodiment
of its value. On the other hand, the gold, in its metallic
reality ranks as the embodiment of value, as money. Gold,
as gold, is exchange value itself. As to its use-value, that has
only an ideal existence, represented by the series of expres-

n8 Capitalist Production.

sions of relative value in which it stands face to face with all
other commodities, the sum of whose uses makes up the sum
of the various uses of gold. These antagonistic forms of com
modities are the real forms in which the process of their
exchange moves and takes place.

Let us now accompany the owner of some commodity — say,
our old friend the weaver of linen — to the scene of action, the
market. His 20 yards of linen has a definite price, £2. He
exchanges it for the £2, and then, like a man of the good old
stamp that he is; he parts with the £2 for a family Bible of the
same price. The linen, which in his eyes is a mere commodity,
a depository of value, he alienates in exchange for gold, which
is the linen's value-form, and this form he again parts with for
another commodity, the Bible; which is destined to enter his
house as an object of utility and of edification to its inmates.
The exchange becomes an accomplished fact by two metamor
phoses of opposite yet supplementary character — the conversion
of the commodity into money, and the re-conversion of the
money into a commodity.1 The two phases of this metamor
phosis are both of them distinct transactions of the weaver —
selling, or the exchange of the commodity for money ; buying,
or the exchange of the money for a commodity ; and, the unity
of the two acts, selling in order to buy.

The result of the whole transaction, as regards the weaver,
is this, that instead of being in possession of the linen, he now
has the Bible; instead of his original commodity, he now
possesses another of the same value but of different utility.
In like manner he procures his other means of subsistence and
means of production. From his point of view, the whole pro
cess effectuates nothing more than the exchange of the product
of his labour for the product of some one else's, nothing more
than an exchange of products.

The exchange of commodities is therefore accompanied by
the following changes in their form.

141 IK 8t TOV irvpbs dvra/Jielpeffdai irdvra, (f>r}fflv,6 'H/x£/eXeiTO$, Kal trvp

far&vTuv, tiffirep xPvff°v XP^IJ-aTa-Ka^-XP'niJi^r<^v XpV*k»M (F. Lassalle: Die Philosophic
Herakleitos des Dunkeln. Berlin, 1845. Vol. I, p. 222.) Lassalle, in his note on
this passage, p. 224, n. 3, erroneously makes gold a mere symbol of value.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 119

Commodity — Money — Commodity.

C M C.

The result of the whole process is; so far as concerns the
objects themselves, C — C, the exchange of one commodity for
another, the circulation of materialised social labour. When
this result is attained, the process is at an end.

C — M. First metamorphosis, or sale.

The leap taken by value from the body of the commodity,
into the body of the gold, is, as I have elsewhere called it, the
salto mortale of the commodity. If it falls short, then, al
though the commodity itself is not harmed, its owner decidedly
is. The social division of labour cajis_es_bis_Jabau,rJoJ)e as one
sided as his wants are many-sided. This is precisely the reason
why the product of his labour serves him solely as exchange
value. But it cannot acquire the properties of a socially recog
nised universal equivalent, except by being converted into
money. That money, however, is in some one else's pocket. In
order to entice the money out of that pocket, our friend's com
modity must, above all things, be a use-value to the owner of the
money. For this, it is necessary that the labour expended upon
it, be of a kind that is socially useful, of a kind that constitutes
a branch of the social division of labour. But division of labour
is a system of production which has grown up spontaneously
and continues to grow behind the backs of the producers. The
commodity to be exchanged may possibly be the product of
some new kind of labour, that pretends to satisfy newly arisen
requirements, or even to give rise itself to new requirements. A
particular operation, though yesterday, perhaps, forming one
out of the many operations conducted by one producer in creat
ing a given commodity, may to-day separate itself from this
connection, may establish itself as an independent branch of
labour and send its incomplete product to market as an inde
pendent commodity. The circumstances may or may not be ripe
for such a separation. To-day the product satisfies a social
want. To-morrow the article may, either altogether or partial
ly, be superseded by some other appropriate product. Moreover,
although our weaver's labour may be a recognised branch of

I2O Capitalist Pr&duttien.

the social division of labour, yet that fact is by no meand suffi
cient to guarantee the utility of his 20 yardc, of linen. If the
community's want of linen, and such a want has a limit like
every other want, should already be saturated by the products
of rival weavers, our friend's product is superfluous, redundant,
and consequently useless. Although people do not look a gift-
horse in the mouth, our friend does not frequent the market for
the purpose of making presents. But suppose his product turn
out a real use-value, and thereby attracts money ? The question
arises, how much will it attract ? No doubt the answer is al
ready anticipated in the price of the article, in the exponent cf
the magnitude of its value. We leave out of consideration heie
any accidental miscalculation of value by our friend, a mistake
that is soon rectified in the market. We suppose him to have
spent on his product only that amount of labour-time that is on
an average socially necessary The price then, is merely the
money-name of the quantity of social labour realised in his
commodity. But without the leave, and behind the back, of our
weaver, the old fashioned mode of weaving undergoes a change.
The labour-time that yesterday was without doubt socially nec
essary to the production of a yard of linen, ceases to be so tc-
day, a fact which the owner of the money is only too eager t)
prove from the prices quoted by our friend's competitors. Un
luckily for him, weavers are not few and far between. Lastly,
suppose that every piece of linen in the market contains no
more labour-time than is socially necessary. In spite of this,
all these pieces taken as a whole, may have had superfluous
labour-time spent upon them. If the market cannot stomach
the whole quantity at the normal price of 2 shillings a yard,
this proves that too great a portion of the total labour of the
community has been expended in the form of weaving. The
effect is the same as if each individual weaver had expendec
more labour-time upon his particular product than is socially
necessary. Here we may say, with the German proverb:
caught together, hung together. All the linen in the market
counts but as one article of commerce, of which each piece is
only an aliquot part. And as a matter of fact, the value also of
each single yard is but the materialised form of the same def-

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 121

inite and socially fixed quantity of homogeneous human labour.

We see then, commodities are in love with money, but "the
course of true love never did run smooth." The quantitative
division of labour is brought about in exactly the same spon
taneous and accidental manner as its qualitative division. The
owners of commodities therefore find out, that the same divi
sion of labour that turns them into independent private pro
ducers, also frees the social process of production and the
relations of the individual producers to each other within that
process, from all dependence on the will of those producers,
and that the seeming mutual independence of the individuals
is supplemented by a system of general and mutual dependence
through or by means of the products.

The division of labour converts the product of labour into a
commodity, and thereby makes necessary its further conversion
into money. At the same time it also makes the accomplish
ment of this trans-substantiation quite accidental. Here, how
ever, we are only concerned with the phenomenon in its
integrity, and we therefore assume its progress to be normal.
Moreover, if the conversion take place at all, that is, if the
commodity be not absolutely unsaleable, its metamorphosis
does take place although the price realised may be abnormally
above or below the value.

The seller has his commodity replaced by gold, the buyer
has his gold replaced by a commodity. The fact which here
stares us in the face is, that a commodity and gold, 20 yards
of linen and £2, have changed hands and places, in other words,
that they have been exchanged. But for what is the com
modity exchanged ? For the shape assumed by its own value,
for the universal equivalent. And for what is the gold
exchanged? For a particular form of its own use-value.
Why does gold take the form of money face to face with the
linen ? Because the linen's price of £2, its denomination in
money, has already equated the linen to gold in its character
of money. A commodity strips off its original commodity-form
on being alienated, i.e., on the instant its use-value actually
attracts the gold, that before existed only ideally in its price.
The realisation of a commodity's price, or of its ideal value-

122 Capitalist Production.

form, is therefore at the same time the realisation of the ideal
use-value of money; the conversion of a commodity into
money, is the simultaneous conversion of money into a com
modity. The apparently single process is in reality a double
one. From the pole of the commodity owner it is a sale, from
the opposite pole of the money owner, it is a purchase. In
other words, a sale is a purchase, C — M is also M — C.1

Up to this point we have considered men in only one econom
ical capacity, that of owners of commodities, a capacity in
which they appropriate the produce of the labour of others, by
alienating that of their own labour. Hence, for one commodity
owner to meet with another who has money, it is .necessary,
either, that the product of the labour of the latter person, the
buyer, should be in itself money, should be gold, the material
of which money consists, or that his product should already
have changed its skin and have stripped off its original form
of a useful object In order that it may play the part of
money, gold must of course enter the market at some point or
other. This point is to be found at the source of production
of the metal, at which place gold is bartered, as the immediate
product of labour, for some other product of equal value.
Prom. that moment it always represents the realised price of
some commodity.2 Apart from its exchange for other com
modities at the source of its production, gold, in whose-so-ever
hands it may be, is the transformed shape of some commodity
alienated by its owner ; it is the product of a sale or of the first
metamorphosis C — M.3 Gold, as we saw, became ideal money,
or a measure of values, in consequence of all commodities
measuring their values by it, and thus contrasting it ideally
with their natural shape as useful objects, and making it the
shape of their value. It became real money, by the general
alienation of commodities, by actually changing places with
their natural forms as useful objects, and thus becoming in

1 " Toute vente est achat." (Dr. Quesnay: "Dialogues sur le Commerce et les
Travaux des Artisans." Physiocrates ed. Daire I. Partie, Paris, 1846, p. 170), or
as Quesnay in his "Maximes gdndrales" puts it, "Vendre est acheter."

* "Le prix d'une marchandise ne pouvant etre paye que par le prix d'une autre
marchandise." (Mercier de la Riviere: "L'Ordre natural et essentiel des societes
politiques." Physiocrates, ed. Daire II. Partie, p. 554.)

1 "Pour avoir cet argent, il faut avoir vendu," 1. c., p. 543.

;

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 123

reality the embodiment of their values. When they assume this
money-shape, commodities strip off every trace of their natural
use-value, and of the particular kind of labour to which they
owe their creation, in order to transform themselves into the
uniform, socially recognised incarnation of homogeneous hu
man labour. We cannot tell from the mere look of a piece of
money, for what particular commodity it has been exchanged.
Under their money-form all commodities look alike. Hence,
money may be dirt, although dirt is not money. We will
assume that the two gold pieces, in consideration of which our
weaver has parted with his linen, are the metamorphosed shape
of a quarter of wheat The sale of the linen, C — M, is at the
same time its purchase, M — C. But the sale is the first act of
a process that ends with a transaction of an opposite nature,
namely, the purchase of a Bible ; the purchase of the linen, on
the other hand, ends a movement that began with a transac
tion of an opposite nature, namely, with the sale of the wheat,
O — M (linen — money), which is the first phase of C — M — C
(linen — money — Bible), is also M — C (money — linen), the
last phase of another movement C — M — C (wheat — money —
linen). The first metamorphosis of one commodity, its trans
formation from a commodity into money, is therefore also in
variably the second metamorphosis of some other commodity,
the retransformation of the latter from money into a com
modity.1

M — G , or purchase. The second and concluding metamor
phosis of a commodity.

Because money is the metamorphosed shape of all other
commodities, the result of their general alienation, for this
reason it is alienable itself without restriction or condition.
It reads all prices backwards, and thus, so to say, depicts itself
in the bodies of all other commodities, which offer to it the
material for the realisation of its own use-value. At the same
time the prices, wooing glances cast at money by commodities,

1 As before remarked, the actual producer of gold or silver forms an exception.
He exchanges his product directly for another commodity, without having first sold
it.

124 Capitalist Production.

define tLe limits of its convertibility, by pointing to its quan
tity. Since every commodity, on becoming money, disappears
as a commodity, it is impossible to tell from the money itself,
how it got into the hands of its possessor, or what article has
been changed into it. Non olet, from whatever source it may
come. Representing on the other hand a sold commodity, it
represents on the other hand a commodity to be bought.1

M — C, a purchase, is, at the same time, C — M, a sale ; the
concluding metamorphosis of one commodity is the first meta
morphosis of another. With regard to our weaver, the life of
his commodity ends with the Bible, into which he has recon
verted his £2. But suppose the seller of the Bible turns the £2
set free by the weaver into brandy. M — C, the concluding
phase of C — M — C (linen, money, Bible), is also C — M, the
first phase of C — M — C (Bible, money, brandy). The pro
ducer of a particular commodity has that one article alone to
offer ; this he sells very often in large quantities, but his many
and various wants compel him to split up the price realised, the
sum of money set free, into numerous purchases. Hence a sale
leads to many purchases of various articles. The concluding
metamorphosis of a commodity thus constitutes an aggregation
of first metamorphoses of various other commodities.

If we now consider the completed metamorphosis of a com
modity, as a whole, it appears in the first place, that it is made
up of two opposite and complementary movements, C — M and
M — C. These two antithetical transmutations of a commodity
are brought about by two antithetical social acts on the part
of the owner, and these acts in their turn stamp the character
of the economical parts played by him. As the person who
makes a sale, he is a seller; as the person who makes a pur
chase, he is a buyer. But just as, upon every such transmu
tation of a commodity, its two forms, commodity-form and
money-form, exist simultaneously but at opposite poles, so
every seller has a buyer opposed to him, and every buyer a
seller. While one particular commodity is going through its

" Si 1'argent represente, dans nos mains, les choses quc nous pouvons desirer
d'acheter, il y represente aussi les choses que nous avons vendues pour cet argent."
(Mercier de la Riviere I. c.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 125

two transmutations in succession, from a commodity into
money and from money into another commodity, the owner of
the commodity changes in succession his part from that of
seller to that of buyer. These characters of seller and buyer
are therefore not permanent, but attach themselves in turns to
the various persons engaged in the circulation of commodities.

The complete metamorphosis of a commodity, in its simplest
form, implies four extremes, and three dramatis personse.
First, a commodity comes face to face with money ; the latter
is the form taken by the value of the former, and exists in all
its hard reality, in the pocket of the buyer. A commodity-
owner is thus brought into contact with a possessor of money.
So soon, now, as the commodity has been changed into
money, the money becomes its transient equivalent-form, the
use-value of which equivalent-form is to be found in the
bodies of other commodities. Money, the final term of the
first transmutation, is at the same time the starting point for
the second. The person who is a seller in the first transac
tion thus becomes a buyer in the second, in which a third
commodity-owner appears on the scene as a seller.1

The two phases, each inverse to the other, that make up the
metamorphosis of a commodity constitute together a circular
movement, a circuit: commodity-form, stripping off of this
form, and return to the commodity-form. No doubt, the com
modity appears here under two different aspects. At the start
ing point it is not a use-value to its owner; at the finishing
point it is. So, too, the money appears in the first phase as a
solid crystal of value, a crystal into which the commodity
eagerly solidifies, and in the second, dissolves into the mere
transient equivalent-form destined to be replaced by a use-
value.

The two metamorphoses constituting the circuit are at the
same time two inverse partial metamorphoses of two other
commodities. One and the same commodity, the linen, opens
the series of its own metamorphoses, and completes the meta
morphosis of another (the wheat). In the first phase or sale,

1"I1 y a done . . . quatre termes «t trols contractanta, dont Tun Intervicnt deux
fois." (Le Trowie 1. c. p. 900.)

126 Capitalist Production.

the linen plays these two parts in its own person. But, then,
changed into gold, it completes its own second and final meta
morphosis, and helps at the same time to accomplish the first
metamorphosis of a third commodity. Hence the circuit made
Dy one commodity in the course of its metamorphoses is inextri
cably mixed up with the circuits of other commodities. The
total of all the different circuits constitutes the circulation of
commodities.

The circulation of commodities differs from the direct ex
change of products (barter), not only in form, but in substance.
Only consider the course of events. The weaver has, as a
matter of fact, exchanged his linen for a Bible, his own com
modity for that of some one else. But this is true only so far
as he himself is concerned. The seller of the Bible, who pre
fers something to warm his inside, no more thought of exchang
ing his Bible for linen than our weaver knew that wheat had
been exchanged for his linen. B's commodity replaces that of
A, but A and B do not mutually exchange those commodities.
It may, of course, happen that A and B make simultaneous
purchases, the one from the other ; but such exceptional trans
actions are by no means the necessary result of the general con
ditions of the circulation of commodities. We see here, on
the one hand, how the exchange of commodities breaks through
all local and personal bounds inseparable from direct barter,
and develops the circulation of the products of social labor;
and on the other hand, how it develops a whole network of so
cial relations spontaneous in their growth and entirely beyond
the control of the actors. It is only because the farmer has
sold his wheat that the weaver is enabled to sell his linen, only
because the weaver has sold his- linen that our Hotspur is
enabled to sell his Bible, and only because the latter has sold
the water of everlasting life that the distiller is enabled to sell
his eau-de-me, and so on.

The process of circulation, therefore, does not, like direct
barter of products, become extinguished upon the use values
changing places and hands. The money does not vanish on
dropping out of the circuit of the metamorphosis of a given
commodity. It is constantly being precipitated into new

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 127

places in the arena of circulation vacated by other commodities.
In the complete metamorphosis of the linen, for example, linen
— money — Bible, the linen first falls out of circulation, and
money steps into its place. Then the Bible falls out of circula
tion, and again money takes its place. When one commodity
replaces another, the money commodity always sticks to the
hands of some third person.1 Circulation sweats money from
every pore.

Nothing can be more childish than the dogma, that because
every sale is a purchase, and every purchase a sale, therefore
the circulation of commodities necessarily implies an equili
brium of sales and purchases. If this means that the number
of actual sales is equal to the number of purchases, it is mere
tautology. But its real purport is to prove that every seller
brings his buyer to market with him. Nothing of the kind.
The sale and the purchase constitute one identical act, an
exchange between a commodity-owned and an owner of money,
between two persons as .opposed to each other as the two poles
of a magnet. They form two distinct acts, of polar and oppo
site characters, when performed by one single person. Hence
the identity of sale and purchase implies that the commodity
is useless, if, on being thrown into the alchemistical retort of
circulation, it does not come out again in the shape of money ;
if, in other words, it cannot be sold by its owner, and there
fore be bought by the owner of the money That identity fur
ther implies that the exchange, if it does take place, constitutes
a period of rest, an interval, long or short, in the life of the
commodity. Since the first metamorphosis of a commodity is
at once a sale and a purchase, it is also an independent process
in itself. The purchaser has the commodity, the seller has the
money, i.e., a commodity ready to go into circulation at any
time. No one can sell unless some one else purchases. But
no one is forthwith bound to purchase, because he has just sold.
Circulation bursts through all restrictions as to time, place,
and individuals, imposed by direct barter, and this it effects by
splitting up, into the antithesis of a sale and a purchase, the

1 Self-evident as this may be, it is nevertheless for the most part unobserved by
political economists, and especially by the " Freetrader Vulgaris."

128 Capitalist Production.

direct identity that in barter does exist between the alienation
of one's own and the acquisition of some other man's product.
To say that these two independent and antithetical acts have
an intrinsic unity, are essentially one, is the same as to say
that this intrinsic oneness expresses itself in an external
antithesis. If the interval in time between the two comple
mentary phases of the complete metamorphosis of a commodity
becomes too great, if the split between the sale and the purchase
becomes too pronounced, the intimate connexion between them,
their oneness, asserts itself by producing — a crisis. The
antithesis, use-value and value ; the contradictions that priva ;e
labour is bound to manifest itself as direct social labour, that a
particularized concrete kind of labour has to pass for abstract
human labour; the contradiction between the personification
of objects and the representation of persons by things ; all the»e
antitheses and contradictions, which are immanent in com
modities, assert themselves, and develop their modes of motion,
in the antithetical phases of the metamorphosis of a commod
ity. These modes therefore imply the possibility, and no more
than the possibility, of crisis. The conversion of this mere
possibility into a reality is the result of a long series of rela
tions, that, from our present standpoint of simple circulation,
have as yet no existence.1

b. Tlie currency 2 of m-oney.

The change of form, C — M — C, by which the circulation c f
the material products of labour is brought about, requires th^t

1 Sec my observations on James Mill in "Critique, &c.," p. 123-125. With regard
to this subject, we may notice two methods characteristic of apologetic economy.
The first is the identification of the circulation of commodities with the direct bar
ter of products, by simple abstraction from their points of difference; the second h,
the attempt to explain away the contradictions of capitalist production, by reducirg
the relations between the persons engaged in that mode of production, to the simp'e
relations arising out of the circulation of commodities. The production and circula
tion of commodities are, however, phenomena that occur to a greater or less exter t
in modes of production the most diverse. If we are acquain*ed with nothing bv t
the abstract categories of circulation, which are common to all these modes of pro
duction, we cannot possibly know anything of the specific points of difference cf
those modes, nor pronounce any judgment upon them. In no science Is such a b;g
fuss made with commonplace truisms as in political economy. For instance, J. K
Say sets himself up as a Judge of crises, because, forsooth, he knows that a con - "
modity is a product.

• Translator's note. — This word is here used in its original signification of tbt

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 129

a given value in the shape of a commodity shall begin the pro
cess, and shall, also in the shape of a commodity, end it. The
movement of the commodity is therefore a circuit. On the
other hand, the form of this movement precludes a circuit from
being made by the money. The result is not the return of the
money, but its continued removal further and further away
from its starting-point. So long as the seller sticks fast to his
money, which is the transformed shape of his commodity, that
commodity is still in the first phase of its metamorphosis, and
has completed only half its course. But so soon as he com
pletes the process, so soon as he supplements his sale by a pur
chase, the money again leaves the hands of its possessor. It
is true that if the weaver, after buying the Bible, sells more
linen, money comes back into his hands. But this return is not
owing to the circulation of the first 20 yards of linen ; that cir
culation resulted in the money getting into the hands of the
seller of the Bible. The return of money into the hands of the
weaver is brought about only by the renewal or repetition of
the process of circulation with a fresh commodity, which
renewed process ends with the same result as its predecessor
did. Hence the movement directly imparted to money by the
circulation of commodities takes the form of a constant motion
away from its starting point, of course from the hands of one
commodity owner into those of another. This course consti
tutes its currency (cours de la monnaie).

The currency of money is the constant and monotonous re
petition of the same process. The commodity is always in the
hands of the seller ; the money, as a means of purchase, always
in the hands of the buyer. And money serves as a means of
purchase by realising the price of the commodity. This reali
sation transfers the commodity from the seller to the buyer,
and removes the money from the hands of the buyer into those
of the seller, where it again goes through the same process with
another commodity That this one-sided character of the
moneys motion arises out of the two-sided character of the
commodity's motion, is a circumstance that is veiled over.

course or track pursued by money as it changes from hand to hand, a cours* which
essentially differs from circulation.

130 Capitalist Production.

•

The very nature of the circulation of commodities begets the op
posite appearance. The first metamorphosis of a commodity is
visibly, not only the money's movement, but also that of the
commodity itself; in the second metamorphosis, on the con
trary, the movement appears to us as the movement of the
money alone. In the first phase of its circulation the com
modity changes place with the money. Thereupon the com
modity, under its aspect of a useful object, falls out of
circulation into consumption.1 In its stead we have its value-
shape — the money. It then goes through the second phase of
its circulation, not under its own natural shape, but under the
shape of money. The continuity of the movement is therefore
kept up by the money alone, and the same movement that as
regards the commodity consists of two processes of an anti
thetical character, is, when considered as the movement of
the money, always one and the same process, a continued
change of places with ever fresh commodities. Hence the
result brought about by the circulation of commodities, namely,
the replacing of one commodity by another, takes the appear
ance of having been effected not by means of the change of
form of the commodities, but rather by the money acting as a
medium of circulation, by an action that circulates commodi
ties, to all appearance motionless in themselves, and transfers
them from hands in which they are non-use-values, to hands in
which they are use-values; and that in a direction constantly
opposed to the direction of the money. The latter is con
tinually withdrawing commodities from circulation and step
ping into their places, and in this way continually moving
further and further from its starting-point. Hence, although
the movement of the money is merely the expression of
the circulation of commodities, yet the contrary appears to be
the actual fact, and the circulation of commodities seems to be
the result of the movement of the money.2

1 Even when the commodity is sold over mnd over again, a phenomenon that a*
present has no existence for us, it falls, when definitely sold for the last time, out
of the sphere of circulation into that of consumption, where it serves either at
means of subsistence or means of production.

' " II (1'argent) n'a d'autre mouvement que celui qui lui est iraprimi per !«• pro-
(faction*," (La Troane Lc.p. 8860

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities.

Again, money functions as a means of circulation, only
because in it the values of commodities have independent
reality. Hence its movement, as the medium of circulation, is,
in fact, merely the movement of commodities while changing
their forms. This fact must therefore make itself plainly vis
ible in the currency of money. The twofold change of form in
a commodity is reflected in the twice repeated change of place
of the same piece of money during the complete metamorphosis
of a commodity, and in its constantly repeated change of place,
as metamorphosis follows metamorphosis, and each becomes
interlaced with the others.

The linen, for instance, first of all exchanges its commodity-
form for its money-form. The last term of its first metamor
phosis (C — M), or the money-form, is the first term of its final
metamorphosis (M — C), of its re-conversion into a useful
commodity, the Bible. But each of these changes of form is
accomplished by an exchange between commodity and money,
by their reciprocal displacement. The same pieces of coin, in
the first act, changed places with the linen, in the second, with
the Bible. They are displaced twice. The first metamorpho
sis puts them into the weaver's pocket, the second draws them
out of it The two inverse changes undergone by the same
commodity are reflected in the displacement, twice repeated,
but in opposite directions, of the same pieces of coin.

If, on the contrary, only one phase of the metamorphosis is
gone through, if there are only sales or only purchases, then a
given piece of money changes its place only once. Its second
change corresponds to and expresses the second metamorphosis
of the commodity, its re-conversion from money into another
commodity intended for use. It is a matter of course, that all
this is applicable to the simple circulation of commodities
alone, the only form that we are now considering.

Every commodity, when it first steps into circulation, and
undergoes its first change of form, does so only to fall out of
circulation again and to be replaced by other commodities.
Money, on the contrary, as the medium of circulation, keeps
continually within the sphere of circulation, and moves about

132 Capitalist Production.

in it. The ijuostion therefore arises,, how much money this
sphere constantly absorbs ?

In a given country there take place every day at the same
time, but in different localities, numerous one-sided metamor
phoses of commodities, or, in other words, numerous sales and
numerous purchases. The commodities are equated before-
hand in imagination, by their prices, to definite quantities of
money. And since, in the form of circulation now under con
sideration, money and commodities always come bodily face to
face, one at the positive pole of purchase, the other at the
negative pole of sale, it is clear that the amount of the means
of circulation required, is determined beforehand by the sum of
the prices of all these commodities. As a matter 'of fact, the
money in reality represents the quantity or sum of gold ideally-
expressed beforehand by the sum of the prices of the com
modities. The equality of these two sums is therefore self-
evident. We know, however, that, the values of commodities
remaining constant, their prices vary with the value of gold
(the material of money), rising in proportion as it falls, anl
falling in proportion as it rises. Now if, in consequence of
such a rise or fall in the value of gold, the sum of the prices of
commodities fall or rise, the quantity of money in currency
must fall or rise to the same extent. The change in the
quantity of the circulating medium is, in this case, it is true,
caused by money itself, yet not in virtue of its functioi
as a medium of circulation, but of its function as a measure of
value. First, the price of the commodities varies inversely
as the value of the money, and then the quantity of the
medium of circulation varies directly as the price of the
commodities. Exactly the same thing would happen if, for
instance, instead of the value of gold falling, gold were re
placed by silver as the measure of value, or if, instead of the
value of silver rising, gold were to thrust silver out from bein*
the measure of value. In the one case, more silver would be
current than gold was before; in the other case, less gold
would be current than silver was before. In each case the
Talue of the material of money, i.e., the value of the com-.
Jbodity that serves as the measure of value, would have undei-

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 133

gone a change, and therefore, so, too, would the prices of com
modities which express their values in money, and so, too,
would the quantity of money current whose function it is to
realise those prices. We have already seen, that the sphere of
circulation has an opening through which gold (or the material
of money generally) enters into it as a commodity with a given
value. Hence, when money enters on its functions as a
measure of value, when it expresses prices, its value is already
determined. If now its value fall, this fact is first evidenced
by a change in the prices of those commodities that are
directly bartered for the precious metals at the sources of
their production. The greater part of all other commodities,
especially in the imperfectly developed stages of civil society,
will continue for a long time to be estimated by the former
antiquated and illusory value of the measure of value.
Nevertheless, one commodity infects another through their
common value-relation, so that their prices, expressed in gold
or in silver, gradually settle down into the proportions deter
mined by their comparative values, until finally the values of
all commodities are estimated in terms of the new value of the
metal that constitutes money. This process is accompanied by
the continued increase in the quantity of the precious metals,
an increase caused by their streaming in to replace the articles
directly bartered for them at their sources of production. In
proportion therefore as commodities in general acquire their
true prices, in proportion as their values become estimated
according to the fallen value of the precious metal, in the
same proportion the quantity of that metal necessary for realis
ing those new prices is provided beforehand. A one-sided
observation of the results that followed upon the discovery of
fresh supplies of gold and silver, led some economists in the
17th, and particularly in the 18th century, to the false con
clusion, that the prices of commodities had gone up in conse
quence of the increased quantity of gold and silver serving as
means of circulation. Henceforth we shall consider the value
of gold to be given, as, in fact, it is momentarily whenever we
estimate the price of a commodity.

On this supposition then, the quantity of the medium of

134 Capitalist Production.

circulation is determined by the sum of the prices that have to
be realised. *. If now we further suppose the price of each com
modity to be given, the sum of the prices clearly depends on
the mass of commodities in circulation. It requires but little
racking of brains to comprehend that if one quarter of wheat
cost £2, 100 quarters will cost £200, 200 quarters £400, and
so on, that consequently the quantity of money that changes
place with the wheat, when sold, must increase with the quan
tity of that wheat

If the mass of commodities remain constant, the quantity of
circulating money varies with the fluctuations in the prices ol!
those commodities. It increases and diminishes because the;
sum of the prices increases or diminishes in consequence of the*
change of price. To produce this effect, it is by no meam>
requisite that the prices of all commodities should rise or fal
simultaneously. A rise or a fall in the prices of a number of
leading articles, is sufficient in the one case to increase, in the
other to diminish, the sum of the prices of all commodities
and, therefore, to put more or less money in circulation.
Whether the change in the price correspond to an actua!
change of value in the commodities, or whether it be the result
of mere fluctuations in market prices, the effect on the quan
tity of the medium of circulation remains the same.

Suppose the following articles to be sold or partially meta
morphosed simultaneously in different localities: say, one
quarter of wheat, 20 yards of linen, one Bible, and 4 gallons oi
brandy. If the price of each article be £2, and the sum of the
prices to be realised be consequently £8, it follows that £8 ID
money must go into circulation. If, on the other hand, these
same articles are links in the following chain of metamor
phoses: 1 quarter of wheat — £2 — 20 yards of linen — £2 — 1
Bible — £2 — 4 gallons of brandy — £2, a chain that is already
well-known to us, in that case the £2 cause the different com
modities to circulate one after the other, and after realizing
their prices successively, and therefore the sum of those prices,
£8, they come to rest at last in the pocket of the distiller.
The £2 thus make four moves. This repeated change of place
of the same pieces of money corresponds to the double change

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 135

in form of the commodities, to their motion in opposite direc
tions through two stages of circulation, and to the interlacing
of the metamorphoses of different commodities.1 These anti
thetic and complementary phases, of which the process of met
amorphosis consists, are gone through, not simultaneously, but
successively. Time is therefore required for the completion of
the series. Hence the velocity of the currency of money is
measured by the number of moves made by a given piece of
money in a given time. Suppose the circulation of the 4 ar
ticles takes a day. The sum of the prices to be realised in the
day is £8, the number of moves of the two pieces of money is
four, and the quantity of money circulating is £2. Hence, for
a given interval of time during the process of circulation, we
have the following relation : the quantity of money functioning
as the circulating medium is equal to the sum of the prices of
the commodities divided by the number of moves made by coins
of the same denomination. This law holds generally.

The total circulation of commodities in a given country
during a given period is made up on the one hand of numerous
isolated and simultaneous partial metamorphoses, sales which
are at the same time purchases, in which each coin changes its
place only once, or makes only one move ; on the other hand,
of numerous distinct series of metamorphoses partly running
side by side, and partly coalescing with each other, in each of
which series each coin makes a number of moves, the number
being greater or less according to circumstances. The total
number of moves made by all the circulating coins of one
denomination being given, we can arrive at the average num
ber of moves made by a single coin of that denomination, or at
the average velocity of the currency of money. The quantity
of money thrown into the circulation at the beginning of each
day is of course determined by the sum of the prices of all the
commodities circulating simultaneously side by side. But once
in circulation, coins are, so to say, made responsible for one
another. If the one increase its velocity, the other either

1 " Ce sont les productions qui le (1'argent) mettent en mouvemcnt et le font
circuler ... La cel£rit£ de son mouvement (sc. de 1'argent) supplee 4 sa quantiti.
Lorsqu'il en est besoin, il ne fait que glisser d'une main dans 1'autre sans s'arreter
un instant." (Le Trosnc L c. pp. 916, 916.)

136 Capitalist Production.

retards its own, or altogether falls out of circulation ; for the
circulation can absorb only such a quantity of gold as when
multiplied by the mean number of moves made by one single
coin or element, is equal to the sum of the prices to be real
ised. Hence if the number of moves made by the separate
pieces increase, the total number of those pieces in circulation
diminishes. If the number of the moves diminish, the total
number of pieces increases. Since the quantity of money cap
able of being absorbed by the circulation is given for a given
mean velocity of currency, all that is necessary in order to ab
stract a given number of sovereigns from the circulation is to
throw the same number of one-pound notes into it, a trick well
known to all bankers.

Just as the currency of money, generally considered, is but
a reflex of the circulation of commodities, or of the antithetical
metamorphoses they undergo, so, too, the velocity of that cur
rency reflects the rapidity with which commodities change
their forms, the continued interlacing of one series of meta
morphoses with- another, the hurried social interchange of
matter, the rapid disappearance of commodities from the
sphere of circulation, and the equally rapid substitution of
fresh ones in their places. Hence, in the velocity of the cur
rency we have the fluent unity of the antithetical and com
plementary phases, the unity of the conversion of the useful
aspect of commodities into their value-aspect, and their re-con
version from the latter aspect to the former, or the unity of the
two processes of sale and purchase. On the other hand, the
retardation of the currency reflects the separation of these two
processes into isolated antithetical phases, reflects the stagna
tion in the change of form, and therefore, in the social inter
change of matter. The circulation itself, of course, gives no
clue to the origin of this stagnation ; it merely puts in evidence
the phenomenon itself. The general public, who, simultane
ously, with the retardation of the currency, see money appear
and disappear less frequently at the periphery of circulation,
naturally attribute this retardation to a quantitive deficiency
in the circulating medium.1.

1 Money being . . . the common measure of buying and selling, every body who

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 137

The total quantity of money functioning during a given
period as the circulating medium, is determined, on the one
hand, by the sum of the prices of the circulating commodities,
and on the other hand, by the rapidity with which the anti
thetical phases of the metamorphoses follow one another. On
this rapidity depends what proportion of the sum of the prices
can, on the average, be realised by each single coin. But the
sum of the prices of the circulating commodities depends on
the quantity, as well as on the prices, of the commodities.
TThese three factors, however, state of prices, quantity of circu
lating commodities, and velocity of money-currency, are all
variable. Hence, the sum of the prices to be realised, and
consequently the quantity of the circulating medium depend
ing on that sum, will vary with the numerous variations of
these three factors in combination. Of these variations we
shall consider those alone that have been the most important
in the history of prices.

While prices remain constant, the quantity of the circulat
ing medium may increase owing to the number of circulating
commodities increasing, or to the velocity of currency decreas
ing, or to a combination of the two. On the other hand the

hath anything to sell, and cannot procure chapmen for it, is presently apt to think,
that want of money in the kingdom, or country, is the cause why his goods do not
go off; and so, want of money is the common cry; which is a great mistake. . .
What do these people want, who cry out for money ? . . . The farmer complains
... he thinks that were more money in the country, he should have a price for his
goods. Then it seems money is not his want, but a price for his corn and cattel,
which he would sell, but cannot. . . Why cannot he get a price? ... (1) Either
there is too much corn and cattel in the country, so that most who come to market
have need of selling, as he hath, and few of buying; or (2) There wants the usual
vent abroad by transportation. . . ; or (3) The consumption fails, as when men,
by reason of poverty, do not spend so much in their houses as formerly they did;
wherefore it is not the increase of specific money, which would at all advance the
farmer's goods, but the removal »f any of these three causes, which do truly keep
down the market. . . . The merchant and shopkeeper want money in the same
manner, that is, they want a vent for the goods they deal in, by reason that the
markets fail "... [A nation] " never thrives better, than when riches are tost
from hand to hand." (Sir Dudley North: " Discourses upon Trade," Lond. 1691,
pp. 11-15, passim.) Herrenschwand's fanciful notions amount merely to this, that
the antagonism, which has its origin in the nature of commodities, and is repro
duced in their circulation, can be removed by increasing the circulating medium.
But if, on the one hand, it is a popular delusion to ascribe stagnation in production
and circulation to insufficiency of the circulating medium, it by no means follows,
on the other hand, that an actual paucity of the medium in consequence, e.g., of
bungling legislative interference with the regulation of currency, may not give rise
to such stagnation.

138 Capitalist Production.

quantity of the circulating medium may decrease with a
decreasing number of commodities, or with an increasing
rapidity of their circulation.

With a general rise in the prices of commodities, the quan
tity of the circulating medium will remain constant, provided
the number of commodities in the circulation decrease propor
tionally to the increase in their prices, or provided the velocity
of currency increase at the same rate as prices rise, the number
of commodities in circulation remaining constant. The quan
tity of the circulating medium may decrease, owing to the num
ber of commodities decreasing more rapidly; or to the veloc
ity of currency increasing more rapidly, than prices rise.

With a general fall in the prices of commodities, the quantity
of the circulating medium will remain constant, provided the
number of commodities increase proportionately to their fall in
price, or provided the velocity of currency decrease in the same
proportion. The quantity of the circulating medium will
increase, provided the number of commodities increase quicker,
or the rapidity of circulation decrease quicker, than the prices
fall.

The variations of the different factors may mutually compen
sate each other, so that notwithstanding their continued in
stability, the sum of the prices to be realised and the quantity
of money in circulation remains constant; consequently, we
find, especially if we take long periods into consideration, that
the deviations from the average level, of the quantity of money
current in any country, are much smaller than we should at
first sight expect, apart of course from excessive perturbations
periodically arising from industrial and commercial crises, or,
less frequently, from fluctuations in the value of money.

The law, that the quantity of the circulating medium is
determined by the sum of the prices of the commodities
circulating, and the average velocity of currency1 may also be

1 " There is a certain measure and proportion of money requisite to drive the
trade of a nation, more or less than which would prejudice the same. Just as there
is a certain proportion of farthings necessary in a small retail trade, to change sil
ver money, and to even such reckonings as cannot be adjusted with the smallest
silver pieces. . . . Now, as the proportion of the number of farthings requisite
in commerce is to be taken from the number of people, the frequency of their

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 139

stated as follows : given the sum of the values of commodities,
and the average rapidity of their metamorphoses, the quantity
of precious metal current as money depends on the value of
that precious metal. The erroneous opinion that it is, on the
contrary, prices that are determined by the quantity of the
circulating medium, and that the latter depends on the :
quantity of the precious metals in a country ;* this opinion was i
based by those who first beheld it, on the absurd hypothesis that •
commodities are without a price, and money without a value,
when they first enter into circulation, and that, once in the
circulation, an aliquot part of the medley of commodities is
exchanged for an aliquot part of the heap of precious metals.3

exchanges: as also, and principally, from the value of the smallest silver pieces of
money; so in like manner, the proportion of money [gold and silver specie] requis
ite in our trade, is to be likewise taken from the frequency of commutations, «nd
from the bigness of the payments." (William Petty. " A Treatise on Taxes and
Contributions." Lond. 1662, p. 17.) The Theory of Hume was defended against
the attacks of J. Steuart and others, by A. Young, in his "' Political Arithmetic,"
Lond. 1774, in which work there is a special chapter entitled " Prices depend on
quantity of money," at p. 112, sqq. I have stated in "Critique, &c.," p. 232:
" He (Adam Smith) passes over without remark the question as to the quantity
of coin in circulation, and treats money quite wrongly as a mere commodity."
This statement applies only in so far as Adam Smith, ex officio, treats of money.
Now and then, however, as in his criticism of the earlier systems of political
economy, he takes the right view. " The quantity of coin in every country is
regulated by the value of the commodities which are to be circulated by it. ...
The value of the goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain
quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and
can give employment to no more. The channel of circulation necessarily draws to
itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more." (" Wealth of Na
tions." Bk. IV., ch. I.) 'In like manner, ex officio, he opens his work with an
•potheosis on the division of labour. Afterwards, in the last book which treats
of the sources of public revenue, he occasionally repeats the denunciations of the
division of labour made by his teacher, A. Ferguson.

1 "The prices of things will certainly rise in every nation, as the gold and silver
increase amongst the people; and consequently, where the gold and silver de
crease in any nation, the prices of all things must fall proportionably to such
decrease of money." (Jacob Vanderlint: "Money answers all Things." Lond.
1734, p. 6.) A careful comparison of this book with Hume's "Essays," proves
to my mind without doubt that Hume was acquainted with and made use of Van-
derlint's work, which is certainly an important one. The opinion that prices are
determined by the quantity of the circulating medium, was also held by Barbon
and other much earlier writers. " No inconvenience," says Vanderlint, " can arise
by an unrestrained trade, but very great advantage; since, if the cash of the na
tion be decreased by it, which prohibitions are designed to prevent, those nations
that get the cash will certainly find everything advance in price, as the cash in
creases amongst them. And . . . our manufactures, and everything else, will
soon become so moderate as to turn the balance of trade in our favour, and
thereby fetch the money back again." (1. c., pp. 43, 44.)

' That the price of each single kind of commodity forms part of the sum of the

140 Capitalist Production.

c. Coin and symbols of value.

That money takes the shape of coin, springs from its function
as the circulating medium. The weight of gold represented in
imagination by the prices or money-names of commodities,
must confront those commodities, within the circulation, in
the shape of coins or pieces of gold of a given denomination.
Coining, like the establishment of a standard of prices, is the
business of the State. The different national uniforms worn
at home by gold and silver as coins, and doffed again in the
market of the world, indicate the separation between the
internal or national spheres of the circulation of commodities,
and their universal sphere.

The only difference, therefore, between coin and bullion, is
one of shape, and gold can at any time pass from one form to

prices of all the commodities in circulation, is a self-evident proposition. But hew
use-values, which are incommensurable with regard to each other, are to be ex
changed, en masse, for the total sum of gold and silver in a country, is quite
incomprehensible. If we start from the notion that all commodities together form
one single commodity, of which each is but an aliquot part, we get the followh g
beautiful result: The total commodity = x cwt. of gold; commodity A = an aliqint
part of the total commodity «= the same aliquot part of x cwt. of gold. This is
stated in all seriousness by Montesquieu: " Si Ton compare la masse de Tor et de
1'argent qui est dans le monde avec la somme des marchandises qui y sont, il e?t
certain que chaque denree ou marchandise, en particulier, pourra etre compare'e a
une certaine portion de le masse entiere. Supposons qu'il n'y ait qu'une seu e
denree ou marchandise dans le monde, ou qu'il n'y ait qu'une seule qui s'ache'te,
et qu'elle se divise comme 1'argent: Cette partie de cette marchandise repondia
a une partie de la masse de 1'argent; la moitie du total de 1'une a la moitie cu
total de 1'autre, &c. . . . 1'etablissement du prix des choses depend toujoui s
fondamentalement de la raison du total des choses au total des signes." (Montes
quieu 1. c. t III., pp. 122, 13.) As to the further development of this theory
by Ricardo and his disciples, James Mill, Lord Overstone, and others, ste
"Critique of Political Economy," pp. 235, ff. John Stuart Mill, with his usual
eclectic logic, understands how to hold at the same time the view of his fathe ,
James Mill, and the opposite view. On a comparison of the text of his compen
dium, "Principles of Pol. Econ.," with his preface to the first edition, in which
preface he announces himself as the Adam Smith of his day — we do not kno'v
whether to admire more the simplicity of the man, or that of the public, who too<
him, in good faith, for the Adam Smith he announced himself 4o be, althoug i
he bears about as much resemblance to Adam Smith as say General Williams, of
Kars, to the Duke of Wellington. The original researches of Mr. J. S. Mill, whic \
are neither extensive nor profound, in the domain of political economy, will be
found mustered in rank and file in his little work, " Some Unsettled Questions of
Political Economy," which appeared in 1844. Locke asserts point blank the con
nexion between the absence of value in gold and silver, and the determination of
their values by quantity alone, "Mankind having consented to put an imaginary
value upon gold and silver . . . the intrinsik value, regarded in these metah,
is nothing but the quantity." ("Some considerations," &c., 1691, Works Ed. 1777,
vol. II.. p. 15.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 141

the other.1 But no sooner does coin leave the mint, than it
immediately finds itself on the high-road to the melting pot.
During their currency, coins wear away, some more, others
less. Name and substance, nominal weight and real weight,
begin their process of separation. Coins of the same denom
ination become different in value, because they are different in
weight. The weight of gold fixed upon as the standard of
prices, deviates "from the weight that serves as the circulating
medium, and the latter thereby ceases any longer to be a real
equivalent of the commodities whose prices it realises. The
history of coinage during the middle ages and down into the
18th century, records the ever renewed confusion arising from
this cause. The natural tendency of circulation to convert
coins into a mere semblance of what they profess to be, into a
symbol of the weight of metal they are officially supposed to
contain, is recognised by modern legislation, which fixes the
loss of weight sufficient to demonetise a gold coin, or to make
it no longer legal tender.

The fact that the currency of coins itself effects a separation
between their nominal and their real weight, creating a dis
tinction between them as mere pieces of metal on the one hand,
and as coins with a definite function on the other — this fact
implies the latent possibility of replacing metallic coins by
tokens of some other material, by symbols serving the same
purposes as coins. The practical difficulties in the way of
coining extremely minute quantities of gold or silver, and the
circumstance that at first the less precious metal is used as a
measure of value instead of the more precious, copper instead

* It lies, of course, entirely beyond my purpose to take into consideration such
details as the seigniorage on minting. I will, however, cite for the benefit of the
romantic sycophant, Adam Muller, who admires the " generous liberality " with
which the English Government coins gratuitously, the following opinion of Sir
Dudley North: "Silver and gold, like other commodities, have their ebbings and
flowings. Upon the arrival of quantities from Spain . . . it is carried into the
Tower, and coined. Not long after there will come a demand for bullion to be
exported again. If there is none, but all happens to be in coin, what then? Melt
it down again ; there's no loss in it, for the coining costs the owner nothing. Thus
the nation has been abused, and made to pay for the twisting of straw for asses
to eat. If the merchant were made to pay the price of the coinage, he would
not have sent his silver to the Tower without consideration; and coined money
would always keep a value above uncoined silver." (North, 1. c., p. 18.) North
was himself one of the foremost merchants in the reign of Charles II.

142 Capitalist Production.

of silver, silver instead of gold, and that the less precious
circulates as money until dethroned by the more precious — all
these facts explain the parts historically played by silver and
copper tokens as substitutes for gold coins. Silver and copper
tokens take the place of gold in those regions of the circulation
where coins pass from hand to hand most rapidly, and are sub
ject to the maximum amount of wear and tear. This occurs
where sales and purchases on a very small scale are continually
happening. In order to prevent these satellites from establish
ing themselves permanently in the place of gold, positive
enactments determine the extent to which they must be com-
pulsorily received as payment instead of gold. The particular
tracks pursued by the different species of coin in currency, run
naturally into each other. The tokens keep company with
gold, to pay fractional parts of the smallest gold coin ; gold is,
on the one hand, constantly pouring into retail circulation, and
on the other hand is as constantly being thrown out again by
being changed into tokens.1

The weight of metal in the silver and copper tokens is
arbitrarily fixed by law. When in currency, they wear awaj
even more rapidly than gold coins. Hence their functions
are totally independent of their weight^ and consequently of all
value. The function of gold as coin becomes completely inde
pendent of the metallic value of that gold. Therefore things
that are relatively without value, such as paper notes, can
serve as coins in its place. This purely symbolic character is
to a certain extent masked in metal tokens. In paper money
it stands out plainly. In fact, ce n'est oue le premier pas qui
cofite.

We allude here only to inconvertible paper money issued by

1 If silver never exceed what is wanted for the smaller payments, it cannot be
collected in sufficient quantities for the larger payments . . . the use ot gold in
the main payments necessarily implies also its use in the retail trade: those who
have gold coin offering them for small purchases, and receiving with the com
modity purchased a balance of silver in return; by which means the surplus of
silver that would otherwise encumber the retail dealer, is drawn off and dis
persed into general circulation. But if there is as much silver as will transact
the small payments independent of gold, the retail trader must then receive silver
for small purchases; and it must of necessity accumulate in his hands." (David
Buchanan. " Inquiry into the Taxation and Commercial Policy of Great Britain.**
Edinburgh, 1844, pp. 848, 249.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. '.43

the State and having compulsory circulation. It has its
immediate origin in the metallic currency. Money based upon
credit implies on the other hand conditions, which from our
standpoint of the simple circulation of commodities, are as yet
totally unknown to us. But we may affirm this much, that
just as true paper money takes its rise in the function of money
as the circulating medium, so money based upon credit takes
root spontaneously in the function of money as the means of
payment.1

The State puts in circulation bits of paper on which their
various denominations, say £1, £5, &c., are printed. In so far
as they actually take the place of gold to the same amount,
their movement is subject to the laws that regulate the currency
of money itself. A law peculiar to the circulation of paper
money can spring up only from the proportion in which that
paper money represents gold. Such a law exists; stated
simply, it is as follows: the issue of paper money must not
exceed in amount the gold (or silver as the case may be) which
would actually circulate if not replaced by symbols. Now the
quantity of gold which the circulation can absorb, constantly
fluctuates about a given level. Still, the mass of the circulat
ing medium in a given country never sinks below a certain
minimum easily ascertained by actual experience. The fact
that this minimum mass continually undergoes changes in its
constituent parts, or that the pieces of gold of which it consists
are being constantly replaced by fresh ones, causes of course no
change either in its amount or in the continuity of its circula-

1 The mandarin Wan-mao-in, the Chinese Chancellor of the Exchequer, took it
into his head one day to lay before the Son of Heaven a proposal that secretly
aimed at converting the ass-gnats of the empire into convertible bank notes. The
assignats Committee, in its report of April, 1854, gives him a severe snub
bing. Whether he also received the traditional drubbing with bamboos is not
stated. The concluding part of the report is as follows : — " The Committee has
carefully examined his proposal and finds that it is entirely in favour of the
merchants, and that no advantage will result to the crown." (Arbeiten der
Kaiserlich Russischen Gesandtschaft zu Peking uber China. Aus dem Russischen
von Dr. K. Abel und F. A. Mecklenburg. Erster Band. Berlin, 1858, pp. 47, 59.)
In his evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords on the Bank Acts, a
governor of the Bank of England says with regard to the abrasion of gold coins dur
ing currency: "Every year a fresh class of sovereigns becomes too light. The class
which one year passes with full weight, loses enough by wear and tear to draw the
•calet next year against it." (House of Lords' Committee, 1848, n. 429.)

144 Capitalist Production.

tion. It can thejefore be replaced by paper symbols. If, on
the other hand, all the conduits of circulation were to-day filled
with paper money to the full extent of their capacity for
absorbing money, they might to-morrow be overflowing in
consequence of a fluctuation in the circulation of commodities.
There would no longer be any standard. If the paper money
exceed its proper limit, which is the amount of gold coins of
the like denomination that can actually be current, it would,
apart from the danger of falling into general disrepute, re
present only that quantity of gold, which, in accordance with
the laws of the circulation of commodities, is required, and is
alone capable of being represented by paper. If the quantity
of paper money issued be double what it ought to be, then, as
a matter of fact, £1 would be the money-name not of \ of an
ounce, but of J of an ounce of gold. The effect would be the
same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold
as a standard of prices. Those values that were previously
expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the
price of £2.

Paper-money is a token representing gold or money. The
relation between it and the values of commodities is this, that
the latter are ideally expressed in the same quantities of gold
that are symbolically represented by the paper. Only in so
far as paper-money represents gold, which like all other com
modities has value, is it a symbol of value.1

Finally, some one may ask why gold is capable of being
replaced by tokens that have no value ? But, as we have
already seen, it is capable of being so replaced only in so far
as it functions exclusively as coin, or as the circulating

1 The following passage from Fullarton shows the want of clearness on the part
of even the best writers on money, in their comprehension of its various func
tions: " That, as far as concerns our domestic exchanges, all the monetary func
tions which are usually performed by gold and silver coins, may be performed as
effectually by a circulation of inconvertible notes, having no value but that
factitious and conventional value they derive from the law, is a fact which admits,
I conceive, of no denial. Value of this description may be made to answer all the
purposes of intrinsic value, and supersede even the necessity for a standard, pro
vided only the quantity of issues be kept under due limitation." (Fullarton:
"Regulation of Currencies," London, p. 210.) Because the commodity that
serves as money is capable of being replaced in circulation by mere symboli of
value, therefore its functions as a measure of value and a standard of prices art
declared to be superfluous.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 145

medium, and as nothing else. Now, money has other functions
besides this one, and the isolated function of serving as the
mere circulating medium is not necessarily the only one
attached to gold coin, although this is the case with those
abraded coins that continue to circulate. Each piece of money
is a mere coin, or means of circulation, only so long as it ac
tually circulates. But this is just the case with that minimum
mass of gold, which is capable of being replaced by paper-
money. That mass remains constantly within the sphere of
circulation, continually functions as a circulating medium, and
exists exclusively for that purpose. Its movement therefore
represents nothing but the continued alteration of the inverse
phases of the metamorphosis C — M — C, phases in which com
modities confront their value-forms, only to disappear again
immediately. The independent existence of the exchange
value of a commodity is here a transient apparition, by means
of which the commodity is immediately replaced by another
commodity. Hence, in this process which continually makes
money pass from hand to hand, the mere symbolical existence
of money suffices. Its functional existence absorbs, so to say,
its material existence. Being a transient and objective reflex
of the prices of commodities, it serves only as a symbol of itself,
and is therefore capable of being replaced by a token.1 One
thing is, however, requisite ; this token must have an objective
social validity of its own, and this the paper symbol acquires
by its forced currency. This compulsory action of the
State can take effect only within that inner sphere of circula
tion which is co-terminous with the territories of the com
munity, but it is also only within that sphere that money
completely responds to its function of being the circulating
medium, or becomes coin.

1 From the fact that gold and silver, so far as they are coins, or exclusively
serve as the medium of circulation, become mere tokens of themselves, Nicholas
Barbon deduces the right of Governments " to raise money," that is, to give to the
weight of silver that is called a shilling the name of a greater weight, such as a
crown; and so to pay creditors shillings, instead of crowns. " Money does wear
and grow lighter by often telling over ... It is the denomination and cur
rency of the money that men regard in bargaining, and not the quantity of silver
. . . Tis the public authority upon the metal that makes it money." (N.
Barbon, L c., pp. 29, 30, 25.)

146 Capitalist Production.

SECTION 3. MONEY.

The commodity that functions as a measure of value, and,
either in its own person or by a representative, as the medium
of circulation, is money. Gold (or silver) is therefore money.
It functions as money, on the one hand, when it has to be
present in its own golden person. It is then the money-com
modity, neither merely ideal, as in its function of a measure
of value, nor capable of being represented, as in its function of
circulating medium. On the other hand, it also functions as
money, when by virtue of its function, whether that function
be performed in person or by representative, it congeals into the
sole form of value, the only adequate form of existence of
exchange-value, in opposition to use-value, represented by all
other commodities,

a. Hoarding.

The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical
metamorphoses of commodities, or the never ceasing alternation
of sale and purchase, is reflected in the restless currency of
money, or in the function that money performs of a perpetuum
mobile of circulation. But so soon as the series of metamor
phoses is interrupted, so soon as sales are not supplemented by
subsequent purchases, money ceases to be mobilised ; it is trans
formed, as Boisguillebert says, from "meuble" into "im-
meuble," from movable into immovable, from coin into
money.

With the very earliest development of the circulation of
commodities, there is also developed the necessity, and the
passionate desire, to hold fast the product of the first metamor
phosis. This product is the transformed shape of the com
modity, or its gold-chrysalis.1 Commodities are thus sold not
for the purpose of buying others, but in order to replace their
commodity-form by their money-form. From being the mere
means of effecting the circulation of commodities, this change
of form becomes the end and aim. The changed form of the
commodity is thus prevented from functioning as its uncondi-

»"Une richesse en argent n'est que . . . richesse en productions, convertief
en argent." (Mercier de la Riviere, 1. c.) "Une valeur en productions n'f
fait que changer de forme." (Id., p. 486.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 147

tionally alienable form^ or as its merely transient money-form.
The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller
becomes a hoarder of money.

In the early stages of the circulation of commodities, it is
the surplus use-values alone that are converted into money.
Gold and silver thus become of themselves social expressions
for superfluity or wealth. This naive form of hoarding be
comes perpetuated in those communities in which the tra
ditional mode of production is carried on for the supply of a
fixed and limited circle of home wants. It is thus with the
people of Asia, and particularly of the East Indies. Vander-
lint, who fancies that the prices of commodities in a country
are determined by the quantity of gold and silver to be found
in it, asks himself why Indian commodities are so cheap. An
swer: Because the Hindoos bury their money. From 1602 to
1734, he remarks, they buried 150 millions of pounds sterling
of silver, which originally came from America to Europe.1
In the 10 years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India
and China £120,000,000 in silver, which had been received in
exchange for Australian gold. Most of the silver exported to
China makes its way to India.

As the production of commodities further develops, every
producer of commodities is compelled to make sure of the
nexus rerum of the social pledge.2 His wants are constantly
making themselves felt, and necessitate the continual purchase
of other people's commodities, while the production and sale of
his own goods require time, and depend upon circumstances.
In order then to be able to buy without selling, he must have
sold previously without buying. This operation, conducted
on a general scale, appears to imply a contradiction. But the
precious metals at the sources of their production are directly
exchanged for other commodities. And here we have sales
(by the owners of commodities) without purchases (by the
owners of gold or silver.)3 And subsequent sales, by other

1 " 'Tis by this practice they keep all their goods and manufactures a> srch U»r
rates." (Vanderlint, 1. c., p. 96.)

•Money ... is a pledge." (John Bellers: "Essays about the Poor, Manu/%*
turers, Trade, Plantations, and Immorality," Lond., 1699, p. IS.)

* A purchase, in a " categorical " tense, implies that gold and tilrer are alrwdy
the converted form of commodities, or the product of a §al«.

148 Capitalist Production.

/reducers, unfollowed by purchases, merely bring about the
distribution of the newly produced precious metals among all
the owners of commodities. In this way, all along the line of
exchange, hoards of gold and silver of varied extent are ac
cumulated. With the possibility of holding and storing up
exchange value in the shape of a particular commodity, arises
also the greed for gold. Along with the extension of circula
tion, increases the power of money, that absolutely social form
of wealth ever ready for use. "Gold is a wonderful thing I
Whoever possesses it is lord of all he wants. By means of
gold one can even get souls into Paradise." (Columbus in his
letter from Jamaica, 1503.) Since gold does not disclose what
has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not,
is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and
buyable. The circulation becomes the great social retort into
which everything is thrown, to come out again as a gold-
crystal. Xot even are the bones of saints, and still less are
more delicate res sacrosanctse extra commercium hominum
able to withstand this alchemy.1 Just as every qualitative
difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so
money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is, does
away with all distinctions.2 But money iteelf is a commodity,

1 Henry III., most Christian king of France, robbed cloisters of their relics, and
turned them into money. It is well known what part the despoiling of the
Delphic Temple, by the Phocians, played in the history of Greece. Temples with
the ancients served as the dwellings of the gods of commodities. They were
" sacred banks." With the Phoenicians, a trading people par excellence, money was
the transmuted shape of everything. It was, therefore, quite in order that the
virgins, who, at the feast of the Goddess of Love, gave themselves up to strangers,
should offer to the goddess the piece of money they received.
'"Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!

Thus much of this, will make black white; foul, fair;

Wrong right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.

. . . What this, you gods? Why, this

Will lug your priests and servants from your sides;

Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads;

This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd;

Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves,

And give them title, knee and approbation,

With senators on the bench; this is it,

That makes the wappen'd widow wed again:

Come damned earth,

Thou common whore of mankind."

(Shakespeare: Timon of Athens.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 149

an external object, capable of becoming the private property
of any individual. Thus social power becomes the private
power of private persons. The ancients therefore denounced
money as subversive of the economical and moral order of
things.1 Modern society, which soon after its birth, pulled
Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth,2
greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of
the very principle of its own life.

A commodity, in its capacity of a use-value, satisfies a
particular want, and is a particular element of material wealth.
But the value of a commodity measures the degree of its
attraction for all other elements of material wealth, and there
fore measures the social wealth of its owner. To a barbarian
owner of commodities^ and even to a West-European peasant,
value is the same as value-form, and therefore, to him the
increase in his hoard of gold and silver is an increase in value.
It is true that the value of money varies, at one time in con
sequence of a variation in its own value, at another, in
consequence of a change in the value of commodities. But
this, on the one hand, does not prevent 200 ounces of gold from
still containing more value than 100 ounces, nor, on the other
hand, does it hinder the actual metallic form of this article
from continuing to be the universal equivalent form of all other
commodities, and the immediate social incarnation of all
human labour. The desire after hoarding is in its very nature
unsatiable. In its qualitative aspect, or formally considered,
money has no bounds to its efficacy, i.e., it is the universal re
presentative of material wealth, because it is directly convert
ible into any other commodity. But, at the same time, every
actual sum of money is limited in amount, and therefore, as a

yip dv6p(»)irolffiv oiov Apyvpoi

\affTe' TOVTO xat ir6X«s
IIo/5<?et, r65' Avdpas f^avlffTT]<

l irapa\\d(r<rti
rpbs alffxpb d^purcrois %xeitf
Kal rairds tpyov 5y<ra-^/3eiav clfttvou..

(Sophocles, Antigone.)

* " 'EXT/fo&TTjs TTJS TrXeovel/as drd&iv in rdv pvxwv T^J 717* airrbv rbv
(Athen. Deipnos.)

150 Capitalist Production.

means of purchasing, has only a limited efficacy. This antag
onism between the quantitive limits of money and its qualita
tive boundlessness, continually acts as a spur to the hoarder in
his Sisyphus-like labour of accumulating. It is with him as it
is with a conqueror who sees in every new country annexed,
only a new boundary.

In order that gold may be held as money, and made to form
a hoard, it must be prevented from circulating, or from trans
forming itself into a means of enjoyment. The hoarder,
therefore, makes a sacrifice of the lusts of the flesh to his gold
fetish. He acts in earnest up to the Gospel of abstention. On
the other hand, he can withdraw from circulation no more than
what he has thrown into it in the shape of commodities. The
more he produces, the more he is able to sell. Hard work,
saving, and avarice, are, therefore, his three cardinal virtues,
and to sell much and buy little the sum of his political
economy.1

By the side of the gross form of a hoard, we find also its
aesthetic form in the possession of gold and silver articles.
This grows with the wealth of civil society. " Soyons riches ou
paraissons riches" (Diderot). In this way there is created,
on the one hand, a constantly extending market for gold and
silver, unconnected with their functions as money, and, on the
other hand, a latent source of supply, to which recourse is had
principally in times of crisis and social disturbance.

Hoarding serves various purposes in the economy of the
metallic circulation. Its first function arises out of the con
ditions to which the currency of gold and silver coins is sub
ject We have seen how, along with the continual fluctuations
in the extent and rapidity of the circulation of commodities
and in their prices, the quantity of money current unceasingly
ebbs and flows. This mass must, therefore, be capable of ex
pansion and contraction. At one time money must be attached
in order to act as circulating coin, at another, circulating coin
must be repelled in order to act again as more or less stagnant

* "Accrescere quanto piu si pu6 il numero de' venditori d'ogni merce, diminuerc
quanto piu si pu6 11 numero dei compratori, questt sono i cardini sui quali si
rtgfirano tutte le operazioni di economia politics." (Vcrri, 1. c. p. 62.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 151

money. In order that the mass of money, actually current,
may constantly saturate the absorbing power of the circulation,
it is necessary that the quantity of gold and silver in a country
be greater than the quantity required to function as coia
This condition is fulfilled by money taking the form of hoards.
These reserves serve as conduits for the supply or withdrawal
of money to or from the circulation, which in this way never
overflows its banks.1

b. Means of Payment.

In the simple form of the circulation of commodities hither
to considered, we found a given value always presented to us in
a double shape, as a commodity at one pole, as money at the
opposite pole. The owners of commodities came therefore into
contact as the respective representatives of what were already
equivalents. But with the development of circulation, condi
tions arise under which the alienation of commodities becomes
separated, by an interval of time, from the realisation of their
prices. It will be sufficient to indicate the most simple of
these conditions. One sort of article requires a longer, an
other a shorter time for its production. Again, the production
of different commodities depends on different seasons of the
year. One sort of commodity may be born on its own market
place, another has to make a long journey to market Commod
ity-owner No. 1, may therefore be ready to sell, before No. 2 is
ready to buy. When the same transactions are continually
repeated between the same persons, the conditions of sale are

1 "There is required for carrying on the trade of the nation a determinate sum of
specifick money, which varies, and is sometimes more, sometimes less, as the cir
cumstances we are in require. . . . This ebbing and flowing of money supplies
and accommodates itself, without any aid of Politicians. . . . The buckets
work alternately; when money is scarce, bullion is coined; when bullion is scarce,
money is melted." (Sir D. North, 1. c., Postscript, p. 3.) John Stuart Mill, who
for a long time was an official of the East India Company, confirms the fact that
in India silver ornaments still continue to perform directly the functions of a
hoard. The silver ornaments are brought out and coined when there is a high
rate of interest, and go back again when the rate of interest falls. (J. S. Mill's
Evidence. " Reports on Bank Acts," 1857, 2084.) According to a Parliamentary
document of 1864, on the gold and silver import and export of India, the im
port of gold and silver in 1863 exceeded the export by £19,367,764. During the
8 years immediately preceding 1864, the excess of imports over exports of the
precious metals amounted to £100,652,917. During this century far more than
£200,000,000 has been coined in India.

152 Capitalist Production.

regulated in accordance with the conditions of production.
On the other hand, the use of a given commodity, of a house,
for instance, is sold (in common parlance, let) for a definite
period. Here, it is only at the end of the term that the buyer
has actually received the use-value of the commodity. He
therefore buys it before he pays for it. The vendor sells an
existing commodity, the purchaser buys as the mere represen
tative of money, or rather of future money. The vendor be
comes a creditor, the purchaser becomes a debtor. Since the
metamorphosis of commodities, or the development of their
value-form, appears here under a new aspect, money also ac
quires a fresh function ; it becomes the means of payment.

The character of creditor: or of debtor, results here from th-B
simple circulation. The change in the form of that circula
tion stamps buyer and seller with this new die. At first, there
fore, these new parts are just as transient and alternating a*
those of seller and buyer, and are in turns played by the samo
actors. But the opposition is not nearly so pleasant, and is, f ar
more capable of crystallization.1 The same characters can,
however, be assumed independently of the circulation of com
modities. The class-struggles of the ancient world took the
form chiefly of a contest between debtors and creditors, whicl
in Rome ended in the ruin of the plebeian debtors. Thej
were displaced by slaves. In the middle- ages the contest
ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors, who lost their po
litical power together with the economical basis on which it
was established. Nevertheless, the money relation of debtor
and creditor that existed at these two periods reflected only the
deeper-lying antagonism between the general economical con
ditions of existence of the classes in question.

Let us return to the circulation of commodities. The ap
pearance of the two equivalents, commodities and money, at
the two poles of the process of sale, has ceased to be simulta
neous. The money functions now, first as a measure of value

1 The following shows the debtor and creditor relations existing between English
traders at the beginning of the 18th century. " Such a spirit of cruelty reigns
here in England among the men of trade, that is not to be met with in any other
society of men, nor in any other kingdom of the world." (" An Essay on Credit
and the Bankrupt Act," Lond., 1707, p. 2.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 153

in the determination of the price of the commodity sold; the
price fixed by the contract measures the obligation of the
debtor, or the sum of money that he has to pay at a fixed
date. Secondly, it serves as an ideal means of purchase. Al
though existing only in the promise of the buyer to pay, it
causes the commodity to change hands. It is not before the
day fixed for payment that the means of payment actually
steps into, circulation, leaves the hand of the buyer for that of
the seller. The circulating medium was transformed into a
hoard, because the process stopped short after the first phase,
because the converted shape of the commodity, viz., the money,
was withdrawn from circulation. The means of payment
enters the circulation, but only after the commodity has left
it. The money is no longer the means that brings about the
process. It only brings it to a close, by stepping in as thet
absolute form of existence of exchange value, or as the uni
versal commodity. The seJler turned his commodity into
money, in order thereby to satisfy some want ; the hoarder did
the same in order to keep his commodity in its money-shape,
and the debtor in order to be able to pay; if he do not pay,
his goods will be sold by the sheriff. The value-form of com
modities, money, is therefore now the end and aim of a sale,
and that owing to a social necessity springing out of the
process of circulation itself.

The buyer converts money back into commodities before he
has turned commodities into money : in other words, he
achieves the second metamorphosis of commodities before the
first. The seller's commodity circulates, and realises its price,
but only in the shape of a legal claim upon money. It is con
verted into a use-value before it has been converted into
money. The completion of its first metamorphosis follows
only at a later period.1

1 It will be seen from the following quotation from my book which appeared in
1859, why I take no notice in the text of an opposite form: "Contrariwise, in the
process M — C, the money can be alienated as a real means of purchase, and in
that way, the price of the commodity can be realised before the use-value of the
money is realised and the commodity actually delivered. This occurs constantly
under the every-day form of pre-payments. And it is under this form, that the
English government purchases opium from the ryots of India. ... In these cases,
however, the money always acts as a means of purchase Of course capital

154 Capitalist Production.

The obligations falling due within a given period, repre
sent the sum of the prices of the commodities, the sale oi which
gave rise to those obligations. The quantity of gold ne»^ssary
to realise this sum, depends, in the first instance, on the rapid
ity of currency of the means of payment. That quantity is
conditioned by two circumstances: first the relations between
debtors and creditors form a sort of chain, in such a way that
A, when he receives money from his debtor B, straightway
hands it over to C his creditor, and so on ; the second cir
cumstance is the length of the intervals between the different
due-days of the obligations. The continuous chain of pay
ments, or retarded first metamorphoses, is essentially different
from that interlacing of the series of metamorphoses which
we considered on a former page. By the currency of the
circulating medium, the connexion between buyers and sellers,
is not merely expressed. This connexion is originated by,
and exists in, the circulation alone. Contrariwise, the move
ment of the means of payment expresses a social relation that
was in existence long before.

The fact that a number of sales take place simultaneously,
and side by side, limits the extent to which coin can be re
placed by the rapidity of currency. On the other hand, this
fact is a new lever in economising the means of payment. In
proportion as payments are concentrated at one spot, special
institutions and methods are developed for their liquidation.
Such in the middle ages were the virements at Lyons. The
debts due to A from B, to B from C, to C from A, and so on,
have only to be confronted with each other, in order to annul
each other to a certain extent like positive and negative quan
tities. There thus remains only a single balance to pay. The
greater the amount of the payments concentrated, the less is
this balance relatively to that amount, and the less is the mass
of the means of payment in circulation.

The function of money as the means of payment implies a
contradiction without a terminus medius. In so far as the

also is advanced in the shape of money. . . . This point of view, however,
does not fall within the horizon of simple circulation. ("Critique," &c., pp.
188.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 155

payments balance one another, money functions only ideally
as money of account, as a measure of value. In so far as ac
tual payments have to be made, money does not serve as a
circulating medium, as a mere transient agent in the inter
change of products, but as the individual incarnation of social
labour, as the independent form of existence of exchange value,
as the universal commodity. This contradiction comes to a
head in those phases of industrial and commercial crises which
are known as monetary crises.1 Such a crisis occurs only
where the ever-lengthening chain of payments, and an artificial
system of settling them, has been fully developed. Whenever
there is a general and extensive disturbance of this mechanism,
no matter what its cause, money becomes suddenly and imme
diately transformed, from its merely ideal shape of money of
account, into hard cash. Profane commodities can no longer
replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes value
less, and their value vanishes in the presence of its own
independent form. On the eve of the crisis, the bourgeois,
with the self-sufficiency that springs from intoxicat
ing prosperity, declares money to be a vain imagination.
Commodities alone are money. But now the cry is every
where : money alone is a commodity ! As the hart pants after
fresh water, so pants his soul after money, the only wealth.2
In a crisis, the antithesis between commodities and their value-
form, money, becomes heightened into an absolute contradic
tion. Hence, in such events, the form under which money
appears is of no importance. The money famine continues,

1 The monetary crisis referred to in the text, being a phase of every crisis, must
be clearly distinguished from that particular form of crisis, which also is called a
monetary crisis, but which may be produced by itself as an independent phenomenon
in such a way as to react only indirectly on industry and commerce. The pivot of
these crises is to be found in moneyed capital, and their sphere of direct action is
therefore the sphere of that capital, vir., banking, the stock exchange, and finance.

1 "The sudden reversion from a system of credit to a system of hard cash heaps
theoretical fright on top of the practical panic; and the dealers by whose agency
circulation is affected, shudder before the impenetrable mystery in which their own
economical relations are involved" (Karl Marx, L c. p. 198). "The poor stand still,
because the rich have no money to employ them, though they have the same land
and hands to provide victuals and clothes, as ever they had; . . . which is the
true Riches of a Nation, and not the money." (John Bellers: "Proposal* for raUing
a College of Industry." Lond. 1695. p. 8.)

156 Capitalist Production.

whether payments have to be made in gold or in credit money
such as bank notes.1

If we now consider the sum total of the money current dur
ing a given period, we shall find that, given the rapidity of
currency of the circulating medium and of the means of pay
ment, it is equal to the sum of the prices to be realised, plus
the sum of the payments falling due, minus the payments that
balance each other, minus finally the number of circuits in
which the same piece of coin serves in turn as means of
circulation and of payment. Hence, even when prices, rapid
ity of currency, and the extent of the economy in payments,
are given, the quantity of money current and the mass of com
modities circulating during a given period, such as a day, no
longer correspond. Money that represents commodities long
withdrawn from circulation, continues to be current. Com
modities circulate, whose equivalent in money will not appear
on the scene till some future day. Moreover, the debts con
tracted each day, and the payments falling due on the same
day, are quite incommensurable quantities.2

Credit-money springs directly out of the function of money
as a means of payment. Certificates of the debts owing for
the purchased commodities circulate for the purpose of trans-

1 The following shows how such times are exploited by the "amis du commerce,"
"On one occasion (1839) an old grasping banker (in the city) in his private roorc
raised the lid of the desk he sat over, and displayed to a friend rolls of banknotes,
saying with intense glee there were £600,000 of them, they were held to make
money tight, and would all be let out after three o'clock on the same day." ("The
Theory of Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of 1844." Lond. 1864. p. 81.) The
Observer, a semi-official government organ, contained the following paragraph on
24th April, 1864: "Some very curious rumours are current of the means which
have been resorted to in order to create a scarcity of Banknotes Ques
tionable as it would seem, to suppose that any trick of the kind would be adopted,
the report has been so universal that it really deserves mention."

8 "The amount of purchases or contracts entered upon during the course of any
given day, will not affect the quantity of money afloat on that particular day, but,
in the vast majority of cases, will resolve themselves into multifarious drafts upon
the quantity of money which may be afloat at subsequent dates more or less distant.
. . . . The bills granted or credits opened, to-day, need have no resemblance
whatever, either in quantity, amount, or duration, to those granted or entered upon
to-morrow or next day; nay, many of to-day's bills, and credits, when due, fall in
with a mass of liabilities whose origins traverse a range of antecedent dates alto
gether indefinite, bills at 12, 6, 3 months or 1 often aggregating together to swell
the common liabilities of one particular day. ..." ("The Currency Theory
Reviewed: a letter to the Scottish people." By a Banker in England. Edinburgh,
1846. pp. 29, 30 passim.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 157

ferring those debts to others. On the other hand, to the same
extent as the system of credit is extended, so is the function
of money as a means of payment. In that character it takes
various forms peculiar to itself under which it makes itself at
home in the sphere of great commercial transactions. Gold
and silver coin, on the other hand^ are mostly relegated to the
sphere of retail trade.1

When the production of commodities has sufficiently ex
tended itself, money begins to serve as the means of payment
beyond the sphere of the circulation of commodities. It be
comes the commodity that is the universal subject-matter of
all contracts.2 Rents, taxes, and such like payments are
transformed from payments in kind into money payments.
To what extent this transformation depends upon the general
conditions of production, is shown, to take one example, by
the fact that the Koman Empire twice failed in its attempt to
levy all contributions in money. The unspeakable misery of
the French agricultural population under Louis XIV., a mis
ery so eloquently denounced by Boisguillebert, Marshal, Vau-
ban, and others, was due not only to the weight of the taxes,
but also to the conversion of taxes in kind into money taxes.3

1 As an example of how little ready money is required in true commercial opera
tions, I give below a statement by one of the largest London houses of its yearly
receipts and payments. Its transactions during the year 1856, extending to many
milions of pounds sterling, are here reduced to the scale of one million.

RECEIPTS.
Bankers' and Merchants'

Bills payable after date, - £533,596
Cheques on Bankers, &c.,

payable on demand, - 357,715

Country Notes, - - - 9,627

Bank of England Notes, - 88,554

Gold - - - 28,089

Silver and Copper, - • 1,486

Post Office Orders, • • 983

Total, - £1,000,000

PAYMENTS.

Bills payable after date, - £302,674

Cheques on London Bankers, 663,672

Bank of England Notes, - 22,743

Gold 9,427

Silver and Copper, • • 1,484

Total, - £1,000,000

"Report from the Select Committee on the Bank Acts, July, 1858," p. Ixxi.

3 "The course of trade being thus turned, from exchanging of goods for goods, or
delivering and taking, to selling and paying, all the bargains . . . are now
stated upon the foot of a Prince in money." "An Essay upon Publick Credit."
3rd Ed. Lond., 1710, p. 8.)

1 "L'argent. . . est devenu le bourreau de toutes choses." Finance is the
"alambic, qui a fait eVaporer une quantit^ effroyable de biens et de denrees pour

158 Capitalist Production.

In Asia, on the other hand, the fact that state taxes are chiefly
composed of rents payable in kind, depends on conditions of
production that are reproduced with the regularity of natural
phenomena. And this mode of payment tends in its turn to
maintain the ancient form of production. It is one of the
secrets of the conservation of the Ottoman Empire. If the
foreign trade, forced upon Japan by Europeans, should lead
to the substitution of money rents for rents in kind, it will be
all up with the exemplary agriculture of that country. The
narrow economical conditions under which that agriculture is
carried on, will be swept away.

In every country, certain days of the year become, by habit
recognised settling days for various large and recurrent pay
ments. These dates depend, apart from other revolutions in
the wheel of reproduction, on conditions closely connected with
the seasons. They also regulate the dates for payments that
have no direct connexion with the circulation of commodities
such as taxes, rents, and so on. The quantity of money re
quisite to make the payments, falling due on those dates all
over the country, causes periodical, though merely superficial,
perturbations in the economy of the medium of payment.1

From the law of the rapidity of currency of the means of
payment, it follows that the quantity of the means of pay
ment required for all periodical payments, whatever their
source, is in inverse proportion to the length of their periods.2

faire ce fatal precis." "L'argent declare la guerre a tout le genre humain." (Bois
guillebert: "Dissertation sur la nature des richesses, de 1'argent et de« tribute."
Edit. Daire. Economistes financiers. Paris, 1843, t. i., pp. 413, 410, 417.)

1 "On Whitsuntide, 1824," says Mr. Craig before the Commons' Committee of
1826, "there was such an immense demand for notes upon the banks of Edinburgh,
that by 11 o'clock they had not a note left in their custody. They sent round to all
the different banks to borrow, but could not get them, and many of the transac
tions were adjusted by slips of paper only; yet by three o'clock the whole of the
notes were returned into the banks from which they had issued! It was a mere
transfer from hand to hand." Although the average effective circulation of bank
notes in Scotland is less than three millions sterling, yet on certain pay days in the
year, every single note in the possession of the bankers, amounting in the whole to
about £7,000,000, is called into activity. On these occasions the notes have a
single and specific function to perform, and so soon as they have performed it, they
flow back into the various banks from which they issued. (See John Fullarton,
"Regulation of Currencies." Lond: 1844, p. 85 note.) In explanation it should be
stated, that in Scotland, at the date of Fullarton's work, notes and not cheques were
used to withdraw deposit*.

•To the question. "If there were occasion to raise 4P mHl*r»s p.«^ whether tho

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 159

The development of money into a medium of payment
makes it necessary to accumulate money against the dates
fixed for the payment of the sums owing. While hoarding,
as a distinct mode of acquiring riches, vanishes with the prog
ress of civil society, the formation of reserves of the means of
payment grows with that progress.

c. Universal Money.

When money leaves the home sphere of circulation, it strips
off the local garbs which it there assumes, of a standard of
prices, of coin, of tokens, and of a symbol of value, and re
turns to its original form of bullion. In the trade between the
markets of the world, the value of commodities is expressed so
as to be universally recognised. Hence their independent
value-form also, in these cases, confronts them under the shape
of universal money. It is only in the markets of the world
that money acquires to the full extent the character of the
commodity whose bodily form is also the immediate social in
carnation of human labour in the abstract. Its real mode of
existence in this sphere adequately corresponds to its ideal
concept.

Within the sphere of home circulation, there can be but one
commodity which, by serving as a measure of value, becomes
money. In the markets of the world a double measure of
value holds sway, gold and silver.1

•ame 6 millions (gold) . . . would suffice for such revolutions and circulations
thereof, as trade requires," Petty replies in his usual masterly manner, "I answer
yes: for the expense being 40 millions, if the revolutions were in such short circles,
yiz., weekly, as happens among poor artizans and labourers, who receive and pay
every Saturday, then £g parts of 1 million of money would answer these ends; but
if the circles be quarterly, according to our custom of paying rent, and gathering
taxes, then 10 millions were requisite. Wherefore, supposing payments in general
to be of a mixed circle between one week and 13, then add 10 millions to 42,
the half of which will be 5:A, so as if we have 51A millions we have enough.
(William Petty: "Political Anatomy of Ireland.'* 1672. Edit: Lond. 1691, pp.
IS, 14.)

1 Hence the absurdity of every law prescribing that the banks of a country shall
form reserves of that precious metal alone which circulates at home. The "pleasant
difficulties" thus self-created by the Bank of England, are well known. On the
subject of the great epochs in the history of the changes in the relative value of gold
and silver, see Karl Marx, 1. c. p. 215 sq. Sir Robert Peel, by his Bank Act of
1844, sought to tide over the difficulty, by allowing the Bank of England to issue
notes against silver bullion, on condition that the reserve of silver should never ex
ceed more than one-fourth of the reserve of gold. The value of silver being for

160 Capitalist Production.

Money of the world serves as the universal medium of pay
ment, as the universal means of purchasing, and as the uni
versally recognised embodiment of all wealth. Its function
as a means of payment in the settling of international balances
is its chief one. Hence the watchword of the mercantilists,
balance of trade.1 Gold and silver serve as international

that purpose estimated at its price in the London market. — Note to the 4th German
edition. — We find ourselves once more in a period of a marked change in the relative
values of gold and silver. About 25 years ago the ratio of gold to silver was 15.5 to
I, now it is about 22 to 1, and silver is continually falling against gold. This is
essentially a result of a revolution in the processes of production of these two metals.
Formerly gold was obtained almost exclusively by washing alluvial strata containing
gold, the products of disintegration of gold-carrying rocks. But now this method
is no longer sufficient and has been crowded to the rear by the mining of quartz
layers containing gold, a method formerly considered as secondary, although wull
known even to the ancients (Diodorus, III, 12-14). On the other hand, immense
new silver deposits were discovered in the American Rocky Mountains, and these
as well as the Mexican silver mines opened up by means of railroads, which per
mitted the influx of modern machinery and fuel and thereby reduced the cost and
increased the output of silver mining. But there is a great difference in the way
in which both metals occur in the ore beds. The gold is generally solid, but scat
tered in minute particles through the quartz layers. The whole diggings must
therefore be crushed and the gold washed out or extracted by means of quicksilver.
Frequently one million grams of quartz do not contain more than 1 to 3 grams of
gold, and rarely more than 30 to 60 grams. Silver, on the ether hand, is rare y
found in the pure state, but it occurs in some ores which are easily separated fro n
the dross and contain as much as 40 to 90% of silver. Or smaller quantities of it
are found in ores like copper, lead, etc., which are themselves worth mining. Th s
alone is sufficient to show that the work of producing gold has rather increase!,
while that of producing silver has certainly decreased, and this quite naturally ex
plains the fall in the value of silver. This fall in value would express itself fn a
still greater fall of price, if the price of silver were not held up even now by arti
ficial means. The silver deposits of America, however, have been made accessible
only to a small extent, and there is, consequently, every prospect of a continued fall
in the value of silver. This must be further promoted by the relative decrease cf
the demand for silver for articles of use and luxury, its displacement by plated
wares, aluminum, etc. Judge, then, of the utopianism of the bimetallist illusion thzt
a forced international quotation could raise silver to its old value of 15.5 to 1. The
chances are rather that silver will lose more and more of its character as money o:i
the world market. F. E.

1 The opponents, themselves, of the mercantile system, a system which consic •
ered the settlement of surplus trade balances in gold and silver as the aim of inter
national trade, entirely misconceived the functions of mone)' of the world. I hav-«
shown by the example of Ricardo in what way their false conception of the law?
that regulate the quantity of the circulating medium, is reflected in their equally
false conception of the international movement in the precious metals (1. c. pp. 15"
sq.). His erroneous dogma: "An unfavourable balance of trade never arises but
from a redundant currency. . . . The exportation of the coin is caused by it;
cheapness, and is not the effect, but the cause of an unfavourable balance," alreadj
occurs in Barbon: "The Balance of Trade, if there be one, is not the cause ol
sending away the money out of a nation; but that proceeds from the difference ol
the value of bullion in every country." (N. Barbon; 1. c. pp. 59, 60.) MacCul
loch in "the Literature of Political Economy, a classified catalogue, Lond. 1845,'

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 161

means of purchasing chiefly and necessarily in those periods
when the customary equilibrium in the interchange of products
between different nations is suddenly disturbed. And lastly,
it serves as the universally recognised embodiment of social
wealth, whenever the question is not of buying or paying, but
of transferring wealth from one country to another, and when
ever this transference in the form of commodities is rendered
impossible, either by special conjunctures in the markets, or
by the purpose itself that is intended.1

Just as every country needs a reserve of money for its home
circulation, so, too, it requires one for external circulation in
the markets of the world. The functions of hoards, therefore,
arise in part out of the function of money, as the medium of
the home circulation and home payments, and in part out
of its function of money of the world.2 For this latter func
tion, the genuine money-commodity, actual gold and silver, is
necessary. On that account, Sir James Steuart, in order to
distinguish them from their purely local substitutes, calls gold
and silver "money of the world."

The current of the stream of gold and silver is a double one.
On the one hand, it spreads itself from its sources over all the
markets of the world, in order to become absorbed, to various
extents, into the different national spheres of circulation, to
fill the conduits of currency, to replace abraded gold and silver

praises Barbon for this anticipation, but prudently passes over the naive forms, in
which Barbon clothes the absurd suppositoin on which the "currency principle" is
based. The absence of real criticism and even of honesty, in that catalogue, cul
minates in the sections devoted to the history of the theory of money; the reason
is that MacCulloch in this part of the work is flattering Lord Overstone whom he
calls "fecile princeps argentariorum."

I For instance, in subsidies, money loans for carrying on wars or for enabling
banks to resume cash payments, &c., it is the money, form, and no other, of value
that may be wanted.

I 1 would desire, indeed, no more convincing evidence of the competency of the
machinery of the hoards in specie-paying countries to perform every necessary office
of international adjustment, without any sensible aid from the general circulation,
than the facility with which France, when but just recovering from the shock of a
destructive foreign invasion, completed within the space of 27 months the payment
of her forced contribution of nearly 20 millions to the allied powers, and a con
siderable proportion of the sum in specie, without any perceptible contraction or
derangement of her domestic currency, or even any alarming fluctuation of her
exchanges." (Fullarton, 1. c., p. 134.) — Note to the 4th German edition. — A still
more convincing illustration is given by the ease with which the same France, in
1871 to 1873, was able to pay off in 80 months a war indemnity ten time*

•ad to a considerable extent also in metal money. F. E.

1 62 Capitalist Production.

coins, to supply the material of articles of luxury, and to
petrify into hoards.1 This first current is started by the
countries that exchange their labour, realise in commodities,
for the labour embodied in the precious metals by gold and
silver-producing countries. On the other hand, there is a con
tinual flowing backwards and forwards of gold and silver be
tween the different national spheres of circulation, a current
whose motion depends on the ceaseless fluctuations in the
course of exchange.2

Countries in which the bourgeois form of production is de
veloped to a certain extent, limit the hoards concentrated in
the strong rooms of the banks to the minimum required for
the proper performance of their peculiar functions.3 When
ever these hoards are strikingly above their average level, it
is, with some exceptions, an indication of stagnation in the
circulation of commodities, of an interruption in the even flow
of their metamorphoses.4

1 "L'argent se partage entre les nations relativement au besoin qu'elles en ont.
. . etant toujours attire par les productions." (Le Trosne 1. c., p. 916.) "The
mines which are continually giving gold and silver, do give sufficient to supply
such a needful balance to every nation." (J. Vanderlint, 1. c., p. 40.)

1 "Exchanges rise and fall every week, and at some particular times in the yeaf
run high against a nation, and at other times run as high on the contrary." (N.
Barbon, 1. c., p. 39.)

* These various functions are liable to come into dangerous conflict with one an'
other whenever gold and silver have also to serve as a fund for the conversion of
bank-notes.

4 "What money is more than of absolute necessity for a Home Trade, is dead
stock . . . and brings no profit to that country it's kept in, but as it is trans
ported in trade, as well as imported." (John Bellers, Essays, p. 12.) "What if we
have too much coin? We may melt down the heaviest and turn it into the splendour
of plate, vessels or utensils of gold or silver; or send it out as a commodity, where
the same is wanted or desired; or let it out at interest, where interest is high."
(W. Petty: "Quantulumcunque," p. 39.) "Money is but the fat of the Body
Politick, whereof too much doth as often hinder its agility, as too little makes it
sick .... as fat lubricates the motion of the muscles, feeds in want of
victuals, fills up the uneven cavities, and beautifies the body; so doth money in the
state quicken its action, feeds from abroad in time of dearth at home; evens ac
counts . . and beautifies the whole; altho more especially the particular persons
that have it in plenty." (W. Petty. "Political Anatomy of Ireland," p. 14.)

PART II.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO
CAPITAL.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GENERAL FORMULA FOR CAPITAL.

THE circulation of commodities is the starting point of capital
The production of commodities, their circulation, and that
more developed form of their circulation called commerce,
these form the historical groundwork from which it rises.
The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the
16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-
embracing market

If we abstract from the material substance of the circula
tion of commodities, that is, from the exchange of the various
use-values, and consider only the economic forms produced by
this process of circulation, we find its final result to be money :
this final product of the circulation of commodities is the first
form in which capital appears.

As a matter of history, capital, as opposed to landed prop
erty, invariably takes the form at first of money ; it appears as
moneyecLjEfialth, as the capital of the merchant and of the
usurer.1 But we have no need to refer to the origin of capi
tal in order to discover that the first form of appearance of
capital is money. We can see it daily under our very eyes.

1 The contrast between the power, based on the personal relations of dominion and
servitude, that is conferred by landed property, and the impersonal power that is
given by money, is well expressed by the two French proverbs, "Nulle terre cans
seigneur," and "L'argent n'a pas de maitre."

163

164 Capitalist Production.

All new capital, to commence with, comes on the stage, that is,
on the market, whether of commodities, labour, or money, even
in our days, in the shape of money that by a definite process
has to be transformed into capital.

The firct distinction we notice between money that is money
only, and money that is capital, is nothing more than a differ
ence in their form of circulation.

The simplest form of the circulation of commodities is C —
M — C, the transformation of commodities into money, and the
change of the money back again into commodities ; or selling
in order to buy. But alongside of this form we find another
specifically different form: M — C — M, the transformation of
money into commodities, and the change of commodities back
again into money ; or buying in order to sell. Money th it
circulates in the latter manner is thereby transformed into,
becomes capital, and is already potentially capital.

Now let us examine the circuit M — C — M a little closer.
It consists, like the other, of two antithetical phases. In the
first phase, M — C, or the purchase, the money is changed in x>
a commodity. In the second phase, C — M, or the sale, the
commodity is changed back again into money. The combina
tion of these two phases constitutes the single movement
whereby money is exchanged for a commodity and the same
commodity is again exchanged for money; whereby a cori-
modity is bought in order to be sold, or, neglecting the dis
tinction in form between buying and selling, whereby a
commodity is bought with money, and then money is bought
with a commodity.1 The result, in which the phases of the
process vanish, is the exchange of money for money, M — M.
If I purchase 2000 Ibs. of cotton for £100, and resell the 2000
Ibs. of cotton for £110, I have, in fact, exchanged £100 for
£110, money for money.

Now it is evident that the circuit M — >C — M would be al>-
surd and without meaning if the intention were to exchange
by this means two equal sums of money, £100 for £100. Tie

1 "Arec de ! 'ardent on »chete de» merchandises, ct avec des raarchandise* >n
«ckete de I'arfent." fMercier de la Rariere: "L'ordre nature! et wentiel d«
politiquea." p. MI.)

The General Formula for Capital. 165

miser's plan would be far simpler and surer ; he sticks to his
£100 instead of exposing it to the dangers of circulation. And
yet, whether the merchant who has paid £100 for his cotton
sells it for £110, or lets it go for £100, or even £50, his money
has, at all events, gone through a characteristic and original
movement, quite different in kind from that which it goes
through in the hands of the peasant who sells corn, and with
the money thus set free buys clothes. We have therefore to
examine first the distinguishing characteristics of the forms of
the circuits M — C — M and C — M — C, and in doing this the
real difference that underlies the mere difference of form will
reveal itself.

Let us see, in the first place, what the two forms have in
common.

Both circuits are resolvable into the same two antithetical
phases, C — M, a sale, and M — C, a purchase. In each of
these phases the same material elements — a commodity, and
money, and the same economical dramatis persona?, a buyer
and a seller — confront one another. Each circuit is the unity
of the same two antithetical phases, and in each case this unity
is brought about by the intervention of three contracting par
ties, of whom one only sells, another only buys, while the third
both buys and sells.

What, however, first and foremost distinguishes the circuit
C — M — C from the circuit M — C! — M, is the inverted order of
succession of the two phases. The simple circulation of com
modities begins with a sale and ends with a purchase, while
the circulation of money as capital begins with a purchase
and ends with a sale. In the one case both the starting-
point and the goal are commodities, in the other they are
money. In the first form the movement is brought about
by the intervention of money, in the second by that of a)
commodity.

In the circulation C — M — C, the money is in the end con
verted into a commodity, that serves as a use-value ; it is spent
once for all. In the inverted form, M — C — M, on the con
trary, the buyer lays out money in order that, as a seller, he
may recover money. By the purchase of his commodity he

1 66 Capitalist Production.

throws money into circulation, in order to withdraw it again
by the sale of the same commodity. He lets the money go,
but only with the sly intention of getting it back again. The
money, therefore, is not spent, it is merely advanced.1

In the circuit C — M — C; the same piece of money changes
its place twice. The seller gets it from the buyer and pays it
away to another seller. The complete circulation, which be
gins with the receipt, concludes with the payment, of money
for commodities. It is the very contrary in the circuit M —
C — M. Here it is not the piece of money that changes iia
place twice, but the commodity. The buyer takes it from the
hands of the seller and passes .it into the hands of another
buyer. Just as in the simple circulation of commodities the
double change of place of the same piece of money effects ila
passage from one hand into another, so here the double change
of place of the same commodity brings about the reflux of the
money to its point of departure.

Such reflux is not dependent on the commodity being soli
for more than was paid for it. This circumstance influences
only the amount of the money that comes back. The reflux
itself takes place, so soon as the purchased commodity is re
sold, in other words, so soon as the circuit M — C — M is coir-
pleted. We have here, therefore, a palpable ^difference be
tween the circulation of money as capita], and its circulation
as mere money.

The circuit C — M — C comes completely to an end, so soo i
as the money brought in by the sale of one commodity 13
abstracted again by the purchase of another.

If, nevertheless, there follows a reflux of money to its start
ing point, this can only happen through a renewal or repeti
tion of the operation. If I sell a quarter of corn for £3, and
with this £3 buy clothes, the money, so far as I am concerned,
is spent and done with. It belongs to the clothes merchant
If I now sell a second quarter of corn, money indeed flows
back to me, not however as a sequel to the first transaction,

1 "When a thing is bought in order to be sold again, the sum employed is calle 1
money advanced; when it is bought not to be sold, it may be said to be expended."-- •
(James Steuart: "Works," &c. Edited by Gen. Sir James Steuart, his son. Load,
1806. V. I., p. 274.)

The General Formula for Capital. 167

but in consequence of its repetition. The money again leaves
me, so soon as I complete this second transaction by a fresh
purchase. Therefore, in the circuit C — M — C, the expendi
ture of money has nothing to do with its reflux. On the other
hand, in M — C — M, the reflux of the money is conditioned by
the very mode of its expenditure. Without this reflux, the
operation fails, or the process is interrupted and incomplete,
owing to the absence of its complementary and final phase, the
sale.

The circuit C — M — C starts with one commodity, and
finishes with another, which falls out of circulation and into
consumption. Consumption, the satisfaction of wants, in one
word, use-value, is its end and aim. The circuit M — C — M,
on the contrary, commences with money and ends with money.
Its leading motive, and the goal that attracts it, is therefore
mere exchange value.

In the simple circulation of commodities, the two extremes
of the circuit have the same economic form. They are both
commodities, and commodities of equal value. But they are
also use-values differing in their qualities, as, for example,
corn and clothes. The exchange of products, of the different
materials in which the labour of society is embodied, forms
here the basis of the movement. It is otherwise in the cir
culation M — C — M, which at first sight appears purposeless,
because tautological. Both extremes have the same economic
form. They are both money, and therefore are not qualita
tively different use-values; for money is but the converted
form of commodities, in which their particular use-values
vanish. To exchange £100 for cotton, and then this same
cotton again for £100, is merely a roundabout way of ex
changing money for money, the same for the same, and ap
pears to be an operation just as purposeless as it is absurd.1

1 "On n'echange pas de 1'argcnt centre de 1'argent," says Mercier de la Riviere to
the Mercantilists (1. c., p. 486). In a work, which, ex professo, treats of "trade"
and "speculation," occurs the following: "All trade consists in the exchange of
things of different kinds; and the advantage" (to the merchant?) "arises out of this
difference. To exchange a pound of bread against a pound of bread ....
would be attended with no advantage; .... Hence trade is advantageously
contrasted with gambling, which consists in a mere exchange of money for money."
(Th. Corbet, "An Inquiry into the Causes and Modes of the Wealth of Individuals;

1 68 Capitalist Production.

One sum of money is distinguishable from another only by its
amount. The character and tendency of the process M — O
— M, is therefore not due to any qualitative difference be
tween its extremes, both being money, but solely to their
quantitative difference. More money is withdrawn from cir
culation at the finish than was thrown into, it at the start.
The cotton that was bought for £100 is perhaps resold for
£100+£10 or £110. The exact form of this process is there-
fore M — C — M', where Mr=M+ A M=the original sum ad
vanced, plus an increment. This increment or excess over the
original value I call "surplus-value." The value originally
advanced, therefore, not only remains intact while in circula
tion, but adds to itself a surplus-value or expands itself. It is
this movement that converts it into capital.

Of course it is also possible, that in C — M — O, the two
extremes C — C, say corn and clothes, may represent different
quantities of value. The farmer may sell his corn above its
value, or may buy the clothes at less than their value. He
may, on the other hand, abe done" by the clothes merchant.
Yet, in the form of circulation now under consideration, such
differences in value are purely accidental. The fact that the
corn and the clothes are equivalents, does not deprive the pro
cess of ail meaning, as it does in M — C — M. The equivalence
of their values is rather a necessary condition to Jts_.normai
course.

The repetition or renewal of the act of selling in order to
buy, is kept within bounds by the very object it aims at,
namely, consumption or the satisfa£tian-of definite wants, an

or the principles of Trade and Speculation explained." London, 1841, p. 6.) Al
though Corbet does not see that M — M, the exchange of money for money, is the
characteristic form of circulation, not only of merchants' capital but of all capital,
yet at least he acknowledges that this form is common to gambling and to one spe
cies of trade, viz., speculation: but then comes MacCulloch and makes out, that to
buy in order to sell, is to speculate, and thus the difference between Speculation and
Trade vanishes. "Every transaction in which an individual buys produce in order
to sell it again, is, in fact, a speculation." (MacCulloch: "A Dictionary Practical,
&c., of Commerce." Lond., 1847, p. 1058.) With much more naivet6, Pinto, the
Pindar of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, remarks, "Le commerce est un jeu:
(taken from Locke) ct ce n'est pas avec des gueux qu'on peut gagner. Si Ton gag-
nait long-temps en tout avec tous, il faudrait rendre de bon accord les plus grander
parties du profit pour recommencer le jeu." (Pinto: "Traiti de la Circulation et du
Cridit" Amsterdam, 1771, p. 231.)

The General Formula for Capital. 169

aim that lies altogether outside the sphere of circulation. But
when we buy in order to sell, we, on the contrary, begin and
end with the same thing, money, exchange-value; and thereby
the movement becomes interminable. No doubt, M becomes
M+AM, £100 become £110. But when viewed in their
qualitative aspect alone, £110 are the same as £100, namely
money; and considered quantitatively, £110 is, like £100, a
sum of definite and limited value. If now, the £110 be spent
as money, they cease to play their part They are no longer
capital. Withdrawn from circulation, they become petrified
into a hoard, and though they remained in that state till
doomsday, not a single farthing would accrue to them. If,
then, the expansion of value is once aimed at, there is just the
same inducement to augment the value of the £110 as that of
the £100 ; for both are but limited expressions for exchange-
value, and therefore both have the same vocation to approach,
by quantitative increase, as near as possible to absolute wealth.
Momentarily, indeed, the value originally advanced, the £100
is distinguishable from the surplus value of £10 that is an
nexed to it during circulation ; but the distinction vanishes
immediately. At the end of the process we do not receive
with one hand the original £100, and with the other, the
surplus-value of £10. We simply get a value of £110, which
is in exactly the same condition and fitness for commencing
the expanding process, as the original £100 was. Money ends
the movement only to begin it again.1 Therefore, the final
result of every separate circuit, in which a purchase and con
sequent sale are completed, forms of itself the starting point
of a new circuit The simple circulation of commodities —
selling in order to buy — is a means of carrying out a purpose
unconnected with circulation, namely, the appropriation of
use-values, the satisfaction of wants. The circulation of
money as capital is, on the contrary, an end in itself, for the
expansion of value takes place only within this constantly

1 "Capital is divisible .... into the original capital and toe profit, the incre
ment to the capital .... although in practice this profit is immediately turned
into capital, and set in motion with the original." (F. Engels, "Umrisse zu einer
Kritik der Nationalokonomie, in: Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher, herausgegeben
TOD Arnold Ruge und Karl Marx." Paris, 1844, p. 99.)

170 Capitalist Production.

renewed movement. The circulation of capital has therefore
no limits.1 Thus the conscious representative of this move
ment, the possessor of money becomes a capitalist. His per
son, or rather his pocket, is the point from which the money
starts and to which it returns. The expansion of value,
which is the objective basis or main-spring of the circulation
M — 0 — M, becomes his subjective aim, and it is only in so far
as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth is the ab
stract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he func
tions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and en
dowed with consciousness and a will. Use-values must there
fore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist;2
neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless
never-ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims

1 Aristotle opposes (Economic to Chrematistic. He starts from the former. So
far as it is the art of gaining a livelihood, it is limited to procuring those articles
that are necessary to existence, and useful either to a household or the state. "True
wealth (6 dXTjflivdj irXoOroj) consists of such values in use; for the quantity of pos
sessions of this kind, capable of making life pleasant, is not unlimited. There is,
however, a second mode of acquiring things, to which we may by preference and
with correctness give the name of Chrematistic, and in this case, there appear to be
no limits to riches and possessions. Trade ( jj Kairtj\iK^ is literally retail trade, and
Aristotle takes this kind because in it values in use predominate) does not in its
nature belong to Chrematistic, for here the exchange has reference only to what is
necessary to themselves (the buyer or seller)." Therefore, as he goes on to show,
the original form of trade was barter, but with the extension of the latter, there
arose the necessity for money. On the discovery of money, barter of necessity de
veloped into KO.VTJ\IK^I into trading in c6mmodities, and this again, in opposition to
its original tendency, grew into Chrematistic, into the art of making money. Now
Chrematistic is distinguishable from (Economic in this way, that "in the case of
Chrematistic, circulation is the source of riches (iroifjTiK^ xpti/j-druv .... flid
\(n\\jArd}v Sta/SoXTjj). And it appears to revolve about money, for money is the be
ginning and end of this kind of exchange (rb ydp v6/xt<r/no ffroixtiov Kal x^pas TIJI
dXXa777? Iffrlv). Therefore also riches, such as Chrematistic strives for, are un
limited. Just as every art that is not a means to an end, but an end in itself, has
no limit to its aims, because it seeks constantly to approach nearer and nearer to
that end, while those arts that pursue means to an end, are not boundless, since
the goal itself imposes a limit upon them, so with Chrematistic, there are no bounds
to its aims, these aims being absolute wealth. (Economic not Chrematistic has a
limit .... the object of the former is something different from money, of the
latter the augmentation of money .... By confounding these two forms, which
overlap each other, some people have been led to look upon the preservation and
increase of money ad infinitum as the end and aim of (Economic." (Aristotles De
Rep. edit. Bekker. lib. I. c. 8, 9. passim.)

* "Commodities (here used in the sense of use-values) are not the terminating
object of the trading capitalist, money is his terminating object," (Th. Chalmers
On Pol. Econ. &c., 2nd Ed., Glasgow, 1832, p. 165, 166.)

The General Formula for Capital 171

at.1 This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase
after exchange-value,2 is common to the capitalist and the
miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad,
the capitalist is a rational miser. The never-ending aug
mentation of exchange-value, which the miser strives after, by
seeking to save 3 his money from circulation, is attained by the
more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing it afresh into
circulation.4

The independent form, i. e., the money-form, which the
value of commodities assumes in the case of simple circulation,
serves only one purpose, namely, their exchange, and vanishes
in the final result of the movement. On the other hand, in
the circulation M — C — M, both the money and the commodity
represent only different modes of existence of value itself, the
money its general mode, and the commodity its particular, or,
so to say, disguised mode.5 It is constantly changing from
one form to the other without thereby becoming lost, and thus
assumes an automatically active character. If now we take
in turn each of the two different forms which self-expanding
value successively assumes in the course of its life, we then
arrive at these two propositions : Capital is money : Capital
is commodities.8 In truth, however, value is here the active
factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the
form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time
changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off
surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words,

1 "II mercante non conta quasi per niente il lucro fatto, ma mira sempre al
future." (A. Genovesi, Lezioni di Economia Civile 1765), Custodi's edit, of Italian
Economists. Parte Moderna't. xiii. p. 139.)

* "The inextinguishable passion for gain, the auri sacra fames, will always lead
capitalists." (MacCulloch: "The principles of Polit. Econ." London, 1830, p.
179.) This view, of course, does not prevent the same MacCulloch and others of his
kidney, when in theoretical difficulties, such, for example, as the question of over
production, from transforming the same capitalist into a moral citizen, whose sole
concern is for use-values, and who even developes an insatiable hunger for boots,
hats, eggs, calico, and other extremely familiar sorts of use-values.

'Zwfeij' is a characteristic Greek expression for hoarding. So in English to save
has the same two meanings: sauver and epargner.

* "Questo infinito che le cose non hanno in progresso, hanno in giro." (Galiani.)
8 "Ce n'est pas la matiere qui fait le capital, mais la valeur de ces matieres." (J.

B. Say: "Trait* de 1'Econ. Polit." Seme. ed. Paris, 1817, t. 1., p. 428.)

•"Currency (1) employed in producing articles ... is capital." (MacLeod:
"The Theory and Practice of Banking." London, 1855, v. 1., ch. i., p. 55.)
"Capital is commodities." (James Mill: "Elements of Pol. Econ." Lond., 1821, p. 74.)

172 Capitalist Production.

expands spontaneously. For the movement, in the course of
which it adds surplus value, is its own movement, its expan
sion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value,
it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value
to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays
golden eggs.

Value, therefore, being the active factor in such a process,
and assuming at one time the form of money, at another that
of commodities, but through all these changes preserving itself
and expanding, it requires some independent form, by means
of which its identity may at any time be established. Ard
this form it possesses only in the shape of money. It is under
the form of money that value begins and ends, and begins
again, every act of its own spontaneous generation. It began
by being £100, it is now £110, and so on. But the money
itself is only one of the two forms of value. Unless it takes
the form of some commodity, it does not become capital.
There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding, be
tween the money and commodities. The capitalist knows that
all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however
badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, in
wardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful
means whereby out of money to make more money.

In simple circulation, C — M — C, the value of commodities
attained at the most a form independent of their use-values,
i. e.f the form of money ; but that same value now in the cir
culation M — C — M; or the circulation of capital, suddenly
presents itself as an independent substance, endowed with a
motion of its own, passing through a life-process of its own,
in which money and commodities are mere forms which : t
assumes and casts ojMn turn. Nay, more: instead of simply
representing the relations of commodities, it enters now, so to
say, into private relations jwith itself. It differentiates itself
as original value from itself as surplus-value; as the father
differentiates himself from himself qu& the son, yet both are
one and of one age: for only by the surplus value of £10 does
the £100 originally advanced become capital, and so soon as'
this takes place, so soon as the son, and by the son, the father,

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 173

is begotten, so soon does their difference vanish, and they again
become one, £110.

Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in
process, and, as such, capital. It comes out of circulation,
enters into it again, preserves and multiplies itself within its
circuit, comes back out of it with expanded bulk, and begins
the same round ever afresh.1 M — M', money which begets
money, such is the description of Capital from the mouths
of its first interpreters, the Mercantilists.

Buying in order to sell, or, more accurately, buying in order
to sell dearer, M — C — M', appears certainly to be a form
peculiar to one kind of capital alone, namely, merchants'
capital. But industrial capital too is money ? that is changed
into commodities, and by the sale of these commodities, is re
converted into more money. The events that take place out
side the sphere of circulation, in the interval between the buy
ing and selling, do not affect the form of this movement.
Lastly, in the case of interest-bearing capital, the circulation
M — O — M' appears abridged. We have its result without the
intermediate stage, in the form M — M', "en style lapidaire"
so to say, money that is worth more money, value that is
greater than itself.

M — C — M' is therefore in reality the general formula of
capital as it appears prima facie within the sphere of circula
tion.

CHAPTER V.

CONTRADICTIONS IN THE GENERAL FORMTTLA OF CAPITA!,.

THE form which circulation takes when money becomes cap
ital, is opposed to all the laws we have hitherto investigated
bearing on the nature of commodities, value and money, and
even of circulation itself. What distinguishes this form from
that of the simple circulation of commodities, is the inverted

1 Capital : "portion f ructifiinte dc la richesse accum ul£e . . . valeur permanent*,
tnultipliantc." (Sisxnondi: "Nouvetux principes de 1'icon. polit.," t. i., p. 88, 89.)

174 Capitalist Production.

order of succession of the two antithetical processes, sale and
purchase. How can this purely formal distinction between
these processes change their character as it were by magic ?

But that is not all. This inversion has no existence for two
out of the three persons who transact business together. As
capitalist, I buy commodities from A. .and sell them again to ]Bj
but as a simple ownei^jofjconimodities, I sell them to B and
then purchase fresh ones from A.^ A and B see no difference
between the two sets of transactions. They are merely buyers
or sellers. And I on each occasion meet them as a mere own* r
of either money or commodities, as a buyer or a seller, and,
what is more, in both sets of transactions, I am opposed to A
only as a buyer and to B only as a seller, to the one only as
money, to the other only as commodities, and to either of
them as capital or a capitalist, or as representative of anything
that is more than money or commodities, or that can produce
any effect beyond what money and commodities can. For me
the purchase from A and the sale to B are part of a series.
But thp pnnnpvirm l^ptwpgn,, thfl two acts exists for me alone._
A does not trouble himself about my transaction with B, no*
does B about my business with A. And if I offered to explain
to them the meritorious nature of my action in inverting the-
order of succession, they would probably point out to me tha ;
I was mistaken as to that order of succession, and that the
whole transaction, instead of beginning with a purchase anc
ending with a sale, began, on the contrary, with a sale and was
concluded with a purchase. In truth, my first act, the pur
chase, was from the standpoint of A,, a sale, and my second act,
the sale, was from the standpoint of B, a purchase. Not con
tent with that, A and B would declare that the whole series
was superfluous and nothing but Hokus Pokus ; that for the
future A would buy direct frorp H, and B sell direct to A.
Thus the whole transaction would be reduced to a singlejict
forming an isolated, non-complemented phase in the ordinary
circulation of commodities, a mere sale from A's point of view,
and from B's, a mere purchase. The inversion, therefore, of
the order of succession, does not take us outside the sphere of
the simple circulation of commodities, and we must rather

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 175

look, whether there is in this simple circulation anything per
mitting an expansion of the value that enters into circulation,
and, consequently, a creation of surplus-value.

Let us take the process of circulation in a form under which
it presents itself as a simple and direct exchange of com
modities. This is always the case when two owners of com
modities buy from each other, and on the settling day the
amounts mutually owing are equal and cancel each other.
The money in this case is money of account and serves to ex
press the value of the commodities by their prices, but is not,
itself, in the shape of hard cash, confronted with them. So
far as regards use-values, it is clear that both parties may gain
some advantaga Both part with goods that, as use-values, are
of no service to them, and receive others that they can make
use of. And there may also be a further gain. A, who sells
wine and buys corn, possibly produces more^wine, with given
labour time, than farmer B could, and B, on the other hand,
more cornjhan wine-grower A could. A, therefore, may get,
for the same exchange value, more jgorn, and B_more wine,
than each would respectively get without any exchange by pro
ducing his own corn_and wine. With reference, therefore, to
use-value^jJiere is good ground for saying that "exchange is a
transaction by which bot]i sides jarain." * It is otherwise with
exchange value. "A man who has plenty of wine and no corn
treats with a man who has plenty of corn and no wine ; an ex
change takes place between them of corn to the value of 50,
for wine of the same value. This act produces no increase of
exchange value either for the one or the other ; for each of
them already possessed, before the exchange, a value equal
to that which he acquired by means of that operation. " 2 The
result is not altered by introducing money, as a medium of cir
culation, between the commodities, and making the sale and
the purchase two distinct acts.3 The value of a commodity is

*"L'£cbange est unc transaction admirable dans laquelle les deux contractants
gagnent— toujours (!)" (Destutt de Tracy: "Traite de la Volonte et de ses effets."
Paris, 1826, p. 68.) This work appeared afterwards as "Traite de 1'Econ. Polit.

•"Mercier de la Riviere," 1. c. p. 544.

8 "Que 1'une de ces deux valeurs soit argent, ou qu'elles soient toutes deux mer
chandises usuelles, rien de plus indifferent «n soi." (Mercier de la Riviere,"
1. c. p. 648.)

176 Capitalist Production.

expressed in its prigs before it goes into circulation, and is
therefore a precedent condition of circulation, not its result.1
Abstractedly considered, that is, apart from circumstances
not immediately flowing from the laws of the simple circula
tion of commodities, there is in an exchange nothing (if we
except the replacing of one use-value by another) but a
metamorphosis, a mere change in the form of ^thejspmmodity.
The same exchange value, i.e., the same quantity of incor
porated social labour, remains throughout in the hands of the
owner of the commodity first in the shape of his own com
modity, then in the form of the money for which he exchanged
it, and lastly, in the shape of the commodity he buys with that
money. Thi^ fihangp of form does not imply a change in the
magnitude of the value. But the change, which the value of
the commodity undergoes in this process, is limited to a change
in its money form. This form exists first as the price of the
commodity offered for sale, then as an actual sum of money,
which, however, was already expressed in the price, and lastly,
as the price of an equivalent commodity. This change of
form no more implies, taken alone, a change in the quantity
of value, than does the change of a £5 note into sovereigns,
half sovereigns and shillings. So far therefore as the circula
tion of commodities effects a change in the form alone of their
values, and is free from disturbing influences, it must be the
exchange of equivalents. Little as Vulgar-Economy knows
about the nature of value, yet whenever it wishes to consider
the phenomena of circulation in their purity, it assumes that
supply and demand are equal, which amounts to this, that their
effect is nil. If therefore, as regards the use-values ex
changed, both buyer and seller may possibly gain something,
this is not the case as regards the exchange values. Here we
must rather say, "Where equality exists there can be no gain."2
It is true, commodities may be sold at prices deviating from
their values, but these deviations are to be considered as in-

1 "Ce ne sont pas les contractants qui prononcent sur valcur; elle eat deride*
•Tint la convention." ("Le Trosne," p. 906.)

•"Dove e egualita non £ lucre." (Galiani, "Delia Moneta in Cuftodi. Porte
Moderns," t iv. p. 244.)

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 177

fractions of the laws of the exchange of commodites,1 which V
in its normal state is an exchange of equivalents, consequently, \
no method for increasing value.2

Hence, we see that behind all attempts to represent the
circulation of commodities as a source of surplus-value, there
lurks a quid pro quo, a mixing up of use-value and exchange
value. For instance, Condillac says : "It is not true that on
an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the
contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case,
gives a less for a greater value. ... If we really exchanged
equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet,
they both gain, or ought to gain. Why ? The value of a
thing consists solely in its relation to our wants. What is
more to the one is less to the other, and vice versd. ... It
is not to be assumed that we offer for sale articles required for
our own consumption. . . . We wish to part with a use
less thing, in order to get one that we need ; we want to give
less for more. ... It was natural to think that, in an ex
change, value was given for value, whenever each of the ar
ticles exchanged was of equal value with the same quantity
of gold. . . . But there is another point to be considered in
our calculation. The question is, whether we both exchange
something superfluous for something necessary."3 We see in
this passage, how Condillac not only confuses use-value with
exchange value, but in a really childish manner assumes, that
in a society, in which the production of commodities is well
developed, each producer produces his own means of subsis
tence, and throws into circulation only the excess over his own
requirements.4 Still, Condillac' s argument is frequently used

1 "Lechange devient de"sarantageux pour 1'une des parties, lorsque quelque chose
e"trangere vient diminuer ou exagerer le prix; alors 1'egalite est blessee, mais la
lesion precede de cette cause et non de 1'ichange." ("Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 904.)

1 "L'echange est de sa nature un contrat d'e'galite' qui se fait de valeur pour valeur
{gale. II n'est done pas un moyen de s'enrichir, puisque Ton donne autant que Ton
recoiL" ("Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 903.)

•Condillac: "Le Commerce et le Gouvernement" (1776). Edit. Dairc et Molinari
in the "Melanges d'Econ. Polit." Paris, 1847, p. 267, etc.

• Le Trosne, therefore, answers hit friend Condillac with justice as follows: "Dans
une . . . societe formee il n'y a pas de surabondant en aucun genre." At the
§ame time, in a bantering way, he remarks: "If both the persons who exchange re-
ceive more to an equal amount, and part with less to an equal amount, they both get
the same." It is because Condillac has not the remotest idea of the nature of

178 Capitalist Production.

by modem economists, more especially when the point is to
show, that the exchange of commodities in its developed form,
commerce, is productive of surplus-value. For instance,
"Commerce .... adds value to products, for the same prod
ucts in the hands of consumers, are worth more than in the
hands of producers, and it may strictly be considered an act of
production."1 But commodities are not paid for twice over,
once on account of their use-value, and again on account of
their value. And though the use-value of a commodity is
more servicable to the buyer than to the seller, its money form
is more serviceable to the seller. Would he otherwise sell it?
We might therefore just as well say that the buyer performs
"strictly an act of production," by converting stockings, for
example, into money.

If commodities, or commodities and money, of equal ex
change-value, and consequently equivalents, are exchanged, it
is plain that no one abstracts more value from, than he thro^vs
into, circulation. There is no creation of surplus-value.
And, in its normal form, the circulation of commodities de
mands the exchange of equivalents. But in actual practice,
the process does not retain its normal form. Let us, theie-
fore, assume an exchange of non-equivalents.

In any case the market for commodities is only frequenfcxl
by owners of commodities, and the power which these persons
exercise over each other, is no other than the power of their
commodities. The material variety of these commodities is the
material incentive to the act of exchange, and makes buyers
and sellers mutually dependent, because none of them possess 38
the object of his own wants, and each holds in his hand the
object of another's wants. Besides these material differences
of their use-values, there is only one other difference between
commodities, namely, that between their bodily form and the
form into which they are converted by sale, the difference ba-

exchange value that he has been chosen by Herr Professor Wilhelm Roscher as a
proper person to answer for the soundness of his own childish notions. See
Roscher's "Die Grundlagen der Nationalokomonie, Dritte Auflage," 1858.

1S. P. Newman: "Elements of Polit Econ." Andover and New York, 18; 5,
p. 176.

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital 179

tween commodities and money. And consequently the owners
of commodities are distinguishable only as sellers, those who
own commodities, and buyers, those who own money.

Suppose then, that by some inexplicable privilege, the seller j \
is enabled to sell his commodities above their value, what is I
worth 100 for 110, in which case the price is nominally raised
10%. The seller therefore pockets a surplus value of 10.
But after he has sold he becomes a buyer. A third owner of
commodities comes to him now as seller, who in this capacity
also enjoys the privilege of selling his commodities 10% too
dear. Our friend gained 10 as a seller only to lose it again as
a buyer.1 The nett result is, that all owners of commodities
sell their goods to one another at 10% above their value, which
comes precisely to the same as if they sold them at their true
value. Such a general and nominal rise of prices has the
same effect as if the values had been expressed in weight of
silver instead of in weight of gold. The nominal prices of
commodities would rise, but the real relation between their
values would remain unchanged.

Let us make the opposite assumption, that the buyer has
the privilege of purchasing commodities under their value.
In this case it is no longer necessary to bear in mind that he
in his turn wll become a seller. He was so before he became
buyer; he had already lost 10% in selling before he gained
10% as buyer.2 Everything is just as it was.

The creation of surplus^value, and therefore the conversion j ,
of money into capital, can consequently be explained neither /
on the assumption that commodities are sold above their value, J
nor that they are bought below their value.3

1 "By the augmentation of the nominal value of the produce . . . sellers not en
riched . . . since what they gain as sellers, they precisely expend in the quality of
buyers." ("The Essential Principles of the Wealth of Nations," £c., London, 1797,
p. 66.)

* "Si 1'on est force de donner pour 18 livres une quantite de telle production qui
en valait 24, lorsqu'on employera ce meme argent a acheter, on aura £galement pour
18 1. ce que Ton payait 24." ("Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 897.)

8 "Chaque vendeur ne peut done parvenir a rencherir habituellement ses marchan-
discs, qu'en se soumettant aussi a payer habituellement plus cher les marchandises
des autres vendeurs; et par la meme raison, chaque consommateur ne peut payer
habituellement moins cher ce qu'il achete, qu'en se soumettant aussi a une diminu
tion semblable sur le prix des choses qu il vend." (Mercier de la Ravi6re," 1. c, p.
655.)

180 Capitalist Production.

The problem is in no way simplified by introducing irrele
vant matters after the manner of Col. Torrens: "Effectual
demand consists in the power and inclination ( !), on the part
of consumers, to give for commoditiee, either by immediate or
circuitous barter, some greater portion of ... capital than
their production costs." J In relation to circulation, producers
and consumers meet only as buyers and sellers. To assert
that the surplus-value acquired by the producer has its origin
In the fact that consumers pay for commodities more than their
is only to say in other words: The owjiej^of commod-
gq a $ellerf the privilege of selling too

The seller has himself produced the commodities or represents
their producer, but the buyer has to no less extent produced
the commodities represented by his money, or represents their
producer. The distinction between them is, that one buys and
the other sells. ^JOTe fact that the owner of the commodities,

under the designation of producer, sells them over their value,
and under the designation of consumer, pays too much for
them, does not carry us a single step further.2

To be consistent therefore, the upholders of the delusion that
surplus-value has its origin in a nominal rise of prices or in
the privilege which the seller has of selling too dear, must
assume the existence of a class that only buvs and does not sell*
i.e., only consumes and does not prodn^ The existence of
such a class is inexplicable from the standpoint we have so far
reached, viz., that of simple circulation. But let us anticipate.
The money with which such a class is constantly making pur
chases, must constantly flow into their pockets, without any
exchange, gratis, by might or right, from the pockets of the
commodity-owners themselves. To sell commodities above
their value to such a class, is only to crib back again a part
of the money previously given to it* The towns of Asia

!R. Torrena: "An Essay on the Production of Wealth." London, 1831, p. 349.

* "The idea of profits being paid by the consumers, is, assuredly, very absurd.
Who are the consumers?" (G. Ramsay: "An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth."
Edinburgh, 1336. p. 183.)

1 "When a man is in want of a demand, does Mr. Malthus recommend him to
pay some other person to take off his goods?" is a question put by an angry disciple
of Ricardo to Malthus, who, like his disciple. Parson Chalmers, economically glori
fies this class of simple buyers or consumers. (See "An Inquiry into those princi-

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. iBi

Minor thus paid a yearly money tribute to ancient Rome.
With this money Rome purchased from them commodities, and
purchased them too dear. The provincials cheated the Ro
mans, and thus got back from their conquerors, in the course
of trade, a portion of the tribute. Yet, for all that, the con
quered were the really cheated. Their goods were still paid
for with their own money. That is not the way to get rich or
to create surplus-value.

Let us therefore keep within the bounds of exchange where
sellers are also buyers, and buyers, sellers. Our difficulty may
perhaps have arisen from treating the actors as personifications
instead of as individuals.

A may be clever enough to get the advantage of B or C
without their being able to retaliate. A sells wine worth £40
to B, and obtains from him in exchange corn to the value of
£50. A has converted his £40 into £50, has made more money
out of less, and has converted his commodities into capital.
Let us examine this a little more closely. Before the exchange
we had £40 worth of wine in the hands of A, and £50 worth
of corn in those of B, a total value of £90. After the exchange
we have still the same total value of £90. The value in cir
culation has not increased by one iota, it is only distributed
differently between A and B. What is a loss of value to B
is surplus-value to A ; what is "minus" to one is "plus" to the
other. The same change would have taken place, if A, with
out the formality of an exchange, had directly stolen the £10
from B. The sum of the values in circulation can clearly not
be augmented by any change in their distribution, any more
than the quantity of the precious metals in a country by a
Jew selling a Queen Ann's farthing for a guinea. The cap
italist class, as a whole, in any country, cannot over-reach
themselves.1

Turn and twist then as we may, the fact remains unaltered.

pies respecting the Nature of Demand and the necessity of Consumption, lately ad
vocated by Mr. Malthus," 4c. Lond., 1821, p. 65.)

1 Destutt de Tracy, although, or perhaps because, he was a member of the Insti
tute, held the opposite view. He says, industrial capitalists make profits because
"they all sell for more than it has cost to produce. And to whom do they sell?
In the first instance to one another." (1. e., p. 230.)

1 82 Capitalist Production.

If ftqnivfl_1fntfi flfp pvp.linngfiHj no surplus-value res^lt^ and if
non^eciiuxakiits are exchanged, st.jl] no aiirphiq-yaJpg.1 Cir
culation, or the exchange of commodities, begets no value.2

The reason is now therefore plain why, in analysing the
standard form of capital, the form under which it determines
the economical organisation of modern society, we entirely
left out of consideration its most popular, and, so to say, ante
diluvian forms, merchants' capital and money-lenders' capital.

The circuit M — C — M', buying in order to sell dearer, is
seen most clearly in genuine merchants' capital. But the
movement takes place entirely within the

Since, however, it is impossibly by ^^^lofi^n alone, to ac
count for the conversion of money into capital, for the forma
tion of surplus-value^ it would appear, that merchants' capital
is an impossibility, so long as equivalents are e
therefore, it can only have its origin in the twofold advantage
gained, over both the selling and the buying producers, by the
merchant who parasitically shoves himself in between them.
It is in this sense that Franklin says, "war is robbery, com
merce is generally cheating."4 If the transformation of
merchants' money into capital is to be explained otherwise
than by the producers being simply cheated, a long series of
intermediate steps would be necessary, which, at present, when

1 "L'echange qui se fait de deux valeurs £gales n'augmente ni ne diminue la
masse des valeurs subsistantes dans la societe. L'echange de deux valeurs inegales

ne change rien non plus a la somme des valeurs sociales, bien qu'il ajoute
a la fortune de 1'un ce pu'il ote de la fortune de 1'autre." J. B. Say, 1. c. t. I.,
pp. 344, 345.) Say, not in the least troubled as to the consequences of this state
ment, borrows it, almost word for word, from the Physiocrats. The following example
will shew how Monsieur Say turned to account the writings of the Physiocrats, in
his day quite forgotten, for the purpose of expanding the "value" of his own. His
most celebrated saying, "On n'achete des produits qu'avec des produits" (1. c., t. II.,
p. 438) runs as follows in the original physiocratic work: "Les productions ne se
paient qu'avec des productions." ("Le Trosne," 1. c., p. 899.)

2 "Exchange confers no value at all upon products." (F. Wayland: "The Ele
ments of Political Economy." Boston, 1853, p. 168.)

8 Under the rule of invariable equivalents commerce would be impossible. (G.
Opdyke: "A Treatise on Polit Economy." New York, 1851, p. 66-69.) "The dif
ference between real value and exchange-value is based upon this fact, namely, that
the value of a thing is different from the socalled equivalent given for it in trade,
i.e., that this equivalent is no equivalent." (F. Engels, 1. c. p. 96.)

4 Benjamin Franklin: Works, Vol. II. edit. Sparks in "Positions to be examined
concerning National Wealth," p. 876.

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 183

the simple circulation of commodities forms our only assump
tion, are entirely wanting.

What we have said with reference to merchants' capital,
applies still more to money-lenders' capital. In merchants'
capital, the two extremes, the money that is thrown upon the
market, and the augmented money that is withdrawn from the
market, are at least connected by a purchase and a sale, in
other words by the movement of the circulation. In money
lenders' capital the form M — C — W is reduced to the two ex
tremes without a mean, M — M', money exchanged for more
money, a form that is incompatible with the nature of money,
and therefore remains inexplicable from the standpoint of the
circulation of commodities. Hence Aristotle: "since chrema-
tistic is a double science, one part belonging to commerce, the
other to economic, the latter being necessary and praiseworthy,
the former based on circulation and with justice disapproved
(for it is not based on Nature, but on mutual cheating), there
fore the usurer is most rightly hated, because money itself is
the source of his gain, and is not used for the purposes for
which it was invented. For it originated for the exchange of
commodities, but interest makes out ofjnoney, more^ money.
Hence its name ( TOKO? interest and offspring). For the be
gotten are like those who beget them. But interest is money I
of money, so that of all modes of making a living, this is the '
most contrary to nature." 1

In the course of our investigation, we shall find that both
merchants' capital and interest-bearing capital are derivative
forms, and at the same time it will become clear, why these
two forms appear in the course of history before the modern,
standard form of capital.

We have shown that^ surplus-value cannot be created by
circulation, and, therefore, that in its formation, something
must take place in the background, wnich is not apparent in
the circulation itself.2 But can surplus-value possibly origin
ate anywhere else than in circulation, which is the sum total

1 Aristotle, I. c. c. 10.

* Profit, in the usual condition of the market, is not made hy exchanging. Had
it not existed before, neither could it after that transaction." (Ramsay, 1. c., p.
184.)

1 84 Capitalist Production.

of all the mutual relations of commodity-owners, as far as they
are determined by their commodities ? Apart from circula
tion, the commodity-owner is in relation only with his own
commodity. So far as regards value, that relation is
limited to this, that the commodity contains a quantity of his
labour, that quantity being measured by a definite social
standard. This quantity is expressed by the value of the
commodity, and since the value is reckoned in money of ac
count, this quantity is also expressed by the price, which we
will suppose to be £10. But his labour is not represented both
by the value of the commodity, and by a surplus over that
value, not by a price of 10 that is also a price of 11, not by a
value that is greater than itself. The commodity owner canf
by his labour, create value, but not self -expand ing value. He
can increase the value of his commodity, by adding fresh
labour, and therefore more value to the value in hand, by mak
ing, for instance, leather into boots. The same material has
now more value, because it contains a greater quantity of
labour. The boots have therefore more value than the leathei,
but the value of the leather remains what it was; it has not
expanded itself, has not, during the making of the boots, an
nexed surplus value. It is therefore impossible that outsido
the sphere of circulation, a producer of commodities can, with
out coming into contact with other commodity owners, ex
pand value, and consequently convert money or commodities
into capital.

It is therefore impossible for capital to be produced by cir-
/nllati?rmi and it is equally impossible for it to originate apart
from circulation. It must have its origin both in circulation
and yet not in circulation.

We have, therefore, got a double result

The conversion of money into capital has to be explain£i_oji.
the basis of the laws that regulate the exchange of commod-
ities, in such a way that the starting point is the exfih&nge of
equivalents.1 Our friend, Moneybags, who as yet is only an

1 From the foregoing investigation, the reader will see that this statement only
means that the formation of capital must be possible even though the price and value
of * commodity be the same; for its formation cannot be attributed to any deviation
•f the on« from the other. If prices actually differ from values, we must, first of

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 185

embryo capitalist, must buy his commodities flfr theirvahieT
must sell them at their^ value,, and yet at the end of the pro
cess must withdraw more value from circulation than he threw..
into it at starting. His development into a full-grown capi
talist must take place, both within the sphere of circulation
and without it, These are the conditions of the problem.
Hie Rhodus, hie salta !

CHAPTER VI.

THE BITTING AND SELLING OF LABOUR-PC WEB.

THE change of value that occurs in the case of money intended
to be converted into capital, cannot take place in the money
itself, since in its function of means of purchase and of pay
ment, it does no more than realise the price of the commodity
it buys or pays for; and, as hard cash, it is value petrified,
never varying.1 Just as little can it originate in the second
act of circulation, the re-sale of the commodity, which does
no more than transform the article from its bodily form back
again into its money-form. The chajnge must, therefore, take
place in the commodity bought by the first act, M — C, but not
in its value, for equivalents are exchanged, and the commodity
is paid for at its full value. We are, therefore, forced to the

all, reduce the former to the latter, in other words treat the difference as accidental
in order that the phenomena may be observed in their purity, and our observations
not interfered with by disturbing circumstances that have nothing to do with the
process in question. We know, moreover, that this reduction is no mere scientific
process. The continual oscillation in prices, their rising and falling, compensate each
other, and reduce themselves to an average price, which is their hidden regulator. It
forms the guiding star of the merchant or the manufacturer in every undertaking
that requires time. He knows that when a long period of time is taken, commodities
are sold neither over nor under, but at their average price. If therefore he thought
about the matter at all, he would formulate the problem of the formation of capital
as follows: How can we account for the origin of capital on the supposition that
prices are regulated by the average price, i.e., ultimately by the value of the com
modities? I say "ultimately," because average prices do not directly coincide with
the values of commodities, as Adam Smith, Ricardo, and others believe.

1 "In the form of money. . . capital is productive of no profit." (Ricardo:
"Princ. of Pol. Eton." p. t«7.)

1 86 Capitalist Production.

conclusion that the change originates in the use-value, a& such,
of the commodity, i.e., in its consumption. In order to be able
to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our
friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the
sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity^ whose use-
value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of
value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an em
bodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value.
The possessor of money does find on the market such a special
commodity in capacity for labour orjabour-power.

By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood
the aggregate_of these mental and physical capabilities exist
ing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces
a use-value of. any description.

But in order that our owner of money may be able to find
labour-power offered for sale as a commodity, various condi
tions must first be fulfilled. The exchange of commodities of
itself implies no other relations of dependence than those which
result from its own nature. On this assumption, labour-power
can appear upon the market as a commodity only if, and so
far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is,
offers it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that h<3
may be able to do this, he must have it at his disposal, must
be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, i.e., of
his person.1 He and the owner of money meet in the market,
and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights, with
this difference alone, that one is buyer, the other seller; both,
therefore, equal in the eyes of the law. The continuance o:'
this relation demands that the owner of the labour-power
should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to sell i :
rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself
converting himself from a free man into a slave, from ar
owner of a commodity into a commodity. He must constantly
look upon his labour-power as his own property, his own com
modity, and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal oi

1 In encyclopaedias of classical antiquities we find such nonsense as this — that in
the ancient world capital was fully developed, "except that the free labourer and »
sy«tem of credit was wanting." Mommscn also, in his "History of Rome," commits,
in this respect, one blunder after another.

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 187

the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this
means alone can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership
over it.1

The second essential condition to the owner of money find
ing labour-power in the market as a commodity in this — that
the labourer instead of being in the position to sell com
modities in which his labour is incorporated, must be obliged
to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power, which
exists only in his living self.

In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other
than labour-power, he must of course have the means of
production, as raw material, implements, &c. No boots can
be made without leather. He requires also the means of sub
sistence. Nobody — not even "a musician of the future"
can live upon future products, or upon use-values in an un
finished state; and ever since the first moment of his appear
ance on the world's stage, man always has been, and must still
be a consumer, both before and while he is producing. In a
society where all products assume the form of commodities,
these commodities must be sold after they have been produced ;
it is only after their sale that they can serve in satisfying the
requirements of their producer. The time necessary for their
sale is superadded to that necessary for their production.

For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the
owner of money must meet in the market with the free
labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can

1 Hence legislation in various countries fixes a maximum for labour-contracts.
Wherever free labour is the rule, the laws regulate the mode of terminating this con
tract. In some States, particularly in Mexico (before the American Civil War, also
in the territories taken from Mexico, and also as a matter of fact, in the Danubian
provinces till the revolution affected by Kusa), slavery is hidden under the form of
peonage. By means of advances, repayable in labour, which are handed down
from generation to generation, not only the individual labourer, but his family,
become, de facto, the property of other persons and their families. Juarez abolished
peonage. The so-called Emperor Maximilian re-established it by a decree, which, in
the House of Representatives at Washington, was aptly denounced as a decree for
the re-introduction of slavery into Mexico. "I may make over to another the use,
for a limited time, of my particular bodily and mental aptitudes and capabilities;
because, in consequence of this restriction, they are impressed with a character of
alienation with regard to me as a whole. But by the alienation of all my labour-
time and the whole of my work, I should be converting the substance itself, in other
words, my general activity and reality, my person, into the property of another."
(Hegel, "Philosophic des Rechts." Berlin, 1840, p. 104 { 67.)

i88 Capitalist Production.

dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that oa

I the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short
of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-
power.

The question why this free labourer confronts him in the
market, has no interest for the owner of money, who regards
the labour market as a branch of the general market for com
modities. And for the present it interests us just as little.
We cling to the fact theoretically, as he does practically. One
thing, however, is clear — nature does not produce on the one
side owners of money or commodities, and on the other men
possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation
has no natural basis, neither is its socal basis one that is
common to all historical periods. It is clearly the result of a
past historial development, the product of many economical
revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older forms
of social production.

So, too, the economical categories, already discussed by us,
bear the stamp of history. Definite historical conditions are
necessary that a product may become a commodity. It must
not be produced as the immediate means of subsistence of the
producer himself. Had we gone further, and inquired under
what circumstances all, or even the majority of products take
the form of commodities, we should have found that this can
only happen with production of a very specific kind, capitalist
production. Such an inquiry, however, would have been
foreign to the analysis of commodities. Production and cir
culation of commodities can take place, although the great
mass of the objects produced are intended for the immediate
requirements of their producers, are not turned into commodi
ties, and consequently social production is not yet by a long
way dominated in its length and breadth by exchange-value,
the appearance of products as commodities presupposed such a
development of the social division of labour, that the separation
of use-value from exchange-value, a separation which first
begins with barter, must already have been completed. But
such a degree of development is common to many forms of
society, which in other respects present the most varying

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 189

historical features. On the other hand, if we consider money,
its existence implies a definite stage in the exchange of com
modities. The particular functions of money which it per
forms, either as the mere equivalent of commodities, or as
means of circulation, or means of payment, as hoard or as
universal money, point, according to the extent and relative
preponderance of the one function or the other, to very differ
ent stages in the process of social production. Yet we know ^
by experience that a circulation of commodities relatively \
primitive, suffices for the production of all these forms.
Otherwise with capital. The historioaLfifladitions of its ex
istence are by no means given with the mere circulation of
money and oopi modifies. It can spring into life, only when
the owner of the meajis of production and subsistence meets in
the market with the free labourer selling his labour-power.
And this one historical condition comprises a world's history.
Capital therefore, announces from its first appearance a new
epoch in the process of social production.1

We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity,
labour-power. Like all others it has a value.2 How is that
value determined ?

The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of
every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the
production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this
special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more
than a definite quantity of the average labour of society
incorporated in it. Labour-power exists only as a capacity, or
power of the living individual. Its production consequently
presupposes his existence. Given the individual, the produc
tion of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or
his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given
quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-
time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself

1 The capitalist epoch is therefore characterised by this, that labour-power takes
in the eyes of the labourer himself the form of a commodity which is his property;
his labour consequently becomes wage labour. On the other hand, it is only from
this moment that the produce of labour universally becomes a commodity.

'"The value or worth of a man, is as of all other things his price — that is to «»y,
so much as would be given for the use of his power." (Th. Hobbes: "Leviathan
in Works, Ed. Moleswortb. Load. 1S8&-44, v. tti., p. W.)

190 Capitalist Production.

to that necessary for the production of those meana of sub
sistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the
value of the means of subsistence necessary for the mainte
nance of the labourer. Labour-power, however, becomes a
reality only by its exercise; it sets itself in action only by
working. But thereby a definite quantity of human muscle,
nerve, brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored.
This increased expenditure demands a larger income.1 If the
owner of labour-power works to-day, to-morrow he must again
be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as
regards health and strength. His means of subsistence must
therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state &s
a labouring individual. His natural wants, such as food,
clothing, fuel, and housing, vary according to the climatic and
other physical conditions of his country. On the other hand,
the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also
the modes of Satisfying them, are themselves the product of
historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent
on the degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly
on the conditions unde^r which, and consequently on the habits
and degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has
been formed.2 In contradistinction therefore to the case of

I other commodities, there enters into the determination of the
value oJL labour -power a historical and moral element. Never
theless, in a given country, at a given period, the average
quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer
is practically known.

The owner of labour-power is mortal. If then his appear
ance in the market is to be continuous, and the continuous con
version of money into capital assumes this, the seller of labour-
power must perpetuate himself, "in the way that every living
individual perpetuates himself, by procreation."3 The labour-
power withdrawn from the market by wear and tear and
death, must be continually replaced by, at the very least, an

* Hence the Roman Villicus, as orerlooker of the agricultural slaves, received
"more meagre fare than working slaves, because his work was lighter." (Th.
Mommsen, Rom. Geschicbte, 1856, p. 810.)

* Compare W. H. Thornton : "Orerpopulation and it« Remedy," Lend., 1846.
•Petty.

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 191

amount of fresh labour-power. Hence the sum of the
means of subsistence_necessary for the production of labour-
power must include the means necessary for the labourer's
substitutes, i.e., his children, in order that this race of peculiar
commodity-owners may perpetuate its appearance in the
market,1

In order to modify the human organism, so that it may ac
quire skill and handiness in a given branch of industry, and
become labour-power of a special kind, a special education or
training is requisite, and this, on its part, costs an equivalent
in commodities of a greater or less amo_unt. This amount
varies according to the more or less complicated character of
the labour-power. The expenses of Jiis education (excessive
ly small in the case of ordinary labour-power), enter pro tanto
into the total, value spent in its production.

The value of labour-power resolves itself into the value of a
definite quantity^ of tfae means ofsubsistencei it therefore
varies with the value of these means or with the quantity of
labour requisite fortheir production.

Some of the means of subsistence, such as food and fuel, are
consumed daily, and a fresh supply must be provided daily.
Others such as clothes and furniture last for longer periods
and require to be replaced only at longer intervals. One
article must be bought or paid for daily, another weekly,
another quarterly, and so on. But in whatever way the sum
total of these outlays may be spread over the year, they must
be covered by the average income, taking one day with an
other. If the total of the commodities required daily for the
production of labour-power=A, and those required weekly
— B, and those required quarterly — C, and so on, the daily
average of these commodities = 365A+52^+4C+&c . Suppose that in
this mass of commodities requisite for the average day there
are embodied 6 hours of social labour, then there is incor-

1 Its (labour's natural price. . . . consists in such a quantity of necessaries
and comforts of life, as, from the nature of the climate, and the habits of the coun
try, are necessary to support the labourer, and to enable him to rear such a family
as may preserve, in the market, an undiminished supply of labour.** (R. Torrens:
"An Essay on the external Corn Trade." Lond., 1816, p. 62.) The word labour is
here used incorrectly for labour-power. ^

192 Capitalist Production.

porated daily in labour-power half a day's average social
labour, in other words, half a dav.'a labour in requisite for the
daily production of labour-power. This quantity of labour
forms the value.joif a day's latxmr-power or the value of the
labour-power daily reproduced. If half a day's average social
labour is incorporated in three shillings, then three shillings
is the price corresponding to the value of a day's labour-power.
If its owner therefore offers it for sale at three shillings a
day, its selling price is equal to its value, and according to our
supposition, our friend Moneybags, who is intent upon con
verting his three shillings into capital, pays this value.

The minimum limit of the value of labour-power is deter
mined by the value of the commodities, without the daily
supply of which the labourer cannot renew jbis_vital egergr,
consequently by the value j>f those means of subsistence that
are physically indispensable. If the price of labour-power
fall to this minimum, it falls below its value, since under such
circumstances it can be maintained and developed only in a
crippled state. But the value of every commodity is deter
mined by the labour-time requisite to turn it out so as to be cf
normal quality.

It is a very cheap sort of sentimentality which declares this
method of determining the value of labour-power, a method
prescribed by the very nature of the case, to be a brutd
method, and which wails with Rossi that, "To comprehend
capacity for labour (puissance de travail) at the same time
that we make abstraction from the means of subsistence of the
labourers during the process of production, is to comprehend a
phantom (etre de raison). When we speak of labour, or
capacity for labour, we speak at the same time of the labourer
and his means of subsistence, of labourer and wages."1 Whe:a
we speak of capacity for labour, we do not speak of labour, any
more than when we speak of capacity for digestion, we spea!*:
of digestion. The latter process requires something more than
a good stomach. When we speak of capacity for labour we do
not abstract from the necessary means of subsistence. On th •»
contrary, their value is expressed in its value. If his capacit/

"Court d'Ecoe. Polit: "Bnixelle*, 1843, p. t70.

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 193

for labour remains unsold, the labourer derives no benefit from
it, but rather he will feel it to be a cruel nature-imposed
necessity that this capacity has cost for its production a de
finite amount of the means of subsistence and that it will con
tinue to do so for its reproduction. He will then agree with
Sismondi : "that capacity for labour. ... is nothing unless it
is sold."1

One consequence of the peculiar nature of labour-power as
a commodity is, that its use-value does not, on the conclusion
of this contract between the buyer and seller, immediately pass
into the hands of the former. Its value, like that of every
other commodity, is already fixed before it goes into circula
tion, since a definite quantity of social labour has been spent
upon it ; but its use-value consists in the subsequent exercise of
it* } force. The alienation of labour-power and its actual ap
propriation by the buyer, its employment as a use-value, are
separated by an interval of time. But in those cases in which
the formal alienation by sale of the use-value of a commodity,
is not simultaneous with its actual delivery to the buyer, the
money of the latter usually functions as means of payment.2
In every country in which the capitalist mode of production
reigns, it is the custom not to pay for labour-power before it
has been exercised for the period fixed by the contract, as for
example, the end of each_week. In all cases, therefore, the
use-value of the labour-power is advanced to the capitalist : the
labourer allows the buyer to consume it before he receives pay
ment of the price ; he everywhere gives credit to the capitalist.
That this credit is no mere fiction, is shown not only by the
occasional loss of wages on the bankruptcy of the capitalist,3
but also by a series of more enduring consequences.4 Never-

1 Sismondi: "Nouv. Princ. etc.," t. I. p. 112.

* All labour is paid after it has ceased." ("An inquiry into those Principles re
specting the nature of Demand," &c., p. 104.) "Le credit commercial a dti com-
mencer au moment ou 1'ouvrier, premier artisan de la production, a pu, au rooyen de
ses economies, attendre le salaire de son travail jusqu, 4 la fin de la semaine, de la
quinzaine, du mois, du trimestre, &c. (Ch. Ganilh: "Des Systemes de 1'Econ. Polit."
2e"me. edit. Paris, 1821, t. I. p. 150.)

•"L'ouvrier prete son Industrie," but adds Storch slyly: he "risks nothing"
except "de perdre son salaire .... L'ouvrier ne transmet rien de materiel."
(Storch: "Cours d'Econ. Polit. Econ." Petersbourg, 1815, t. II., p. 87.)

4 One example. In London there are two sorts of bakers, the "full priced," who

194 Capitalist Production.

theless, whether money serves as a means of purchase or as a
means of payment, this makes no alteration in the nature of
the exchange of commodities. The price of the labour-power
is fixed by the contract, although it is not realised till later,
like the rent of a house. The labour-power is sold, although
it is only paid for at a later period. It will, therefore, be
useful, for a clear comprehension of the relation of the parties,
to assume provisionally, that the possessor of labour-power, on
the occasion of each sale, immediately receives the price
stipulated to be paid for it

We now know how the value paid by the purchaser to tha

sell bread at its full value, and the "undersellers," who sell it under its value. The
latter class comprises more than three-fourths of the total number of bakers, (j.
xxxii in the Report of H. S. Tremenheere, commissioner to examine into "the grie>-
ances complained of by the journeymen bakers," &c., Lond. 1862.) The undersellen ,
almost without exception, sell bread adulterated with alum, soap, pearl ashes, chalk,
Derbyshire stone-dust, and such like agreeable nourishing and wholesome ingred:-
ents. (See the above cited blue book, as also the report of "the committee of
1855 on the adulteration of bread," and Dr. Hassall's "Adulterations detected,'
2d Ed. Lond. 1862.) Sir John Gordon stated before the committee of 1855, that "i:t
consequence of these adulterations, the poor man, who lives on two pounds cf
bread a day, does not now get one fourth part of nourishing matter, let alone tit
deleterious effects on his health." Tremenheere states (1. c, p. xlviii), as the rer-
son, why a very large part of the working class, although well aware of this adu '•
teration, nevertheless accept the alum, stone-dust, &c., as part of their purchas* :
that it is for them "a matter of necessity to take from their baker or from the
chandler's shop, such bread as they choose to supply." As they are not paid their
wages before the «nd of the week, they in their turn are unable "to pay for the
bread consumed by their families, during the week, before the end of the week, '
and Tremenheere adds on the evidence of witnesses, "it is notorious that bread coir-
posed of those mixtures, is made expressly for sale in this manner." In many
English and still more Scotch agricultural districts, wages are paid fortnightly and
even monthly; with such long intervals between the payments, the agricultural la
bourer is obliged to buy on credit . . . He must pay higher prices, and is in
fact tied to the shop which gives him credit. Thus at Horningham in Wilts, for ex
ample, where the wages are monthly, the same flour that he could buy elsewhere
at Is lOd per stone, costs him 2s 4d per stone. ("Sixth Report" on "Public Health '
by "The Medical Officer of the Privy Council, &c., 1864." p. 264.) "The bloc<
printers of Paisley and Kilmarnock enforced, by a strike, fortnightly, instead cf
monthly payment of wages." (Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for Slit
Oct, 1853," p. 34.) As a further pretty result of the credit given by tbs
workmen to the capitalist, we may refer to the method current in many English
coal mines, where the labourer is not paid till the end of the month, and ia
the meantime, receives sums on account from the capitalist, often in goods fcr
which the miner is obliged to pay more than the market price (Truck-system).
"It is a common practice with the coal masters to pay once a month, and advance
cash to their workmen at the end of each intermediate week. The cash is give 3
in the shop" (». e., the Tommy shop which belongs to the master); "the men take
it or one side and lay it out on the other." (Children's Employment Commie
»!on, III, Report, London, 1864, p. 88, L

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 195

possessor of this peculiar commodity, labour-power, is de
termined. The use-value which the former gets in exchange,
manifests itself only in the actual usufruct, in the consump
tion of the labour-power. The money owner buys every
thing necessary for this purpose, such as raw material, in the
market, and pays for it at its full value. The consumption
of labour-power is at one and the same time the production of
commodities and of surplus value. The consumption of
labour-power is completed, as in the case of every other com
modity, outside the limits of the market or of the sphere of
circulation. Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the
possessor of labour-power, we therefore take leave for a time
of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the sur
face and in view of all men, and follow them both into the
hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares
us in the face "No admittance except on business." Here we
shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is
produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making.
This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries
the sale and purchase of labour-power goes, is in fact a very
Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom,
Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both
buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are
constrained only by their- own free will. They contract a's
free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form
in which they give legal expression to their common will.
Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as
with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange
equivalent for equivalent Property, because each disposes
only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks
only to himself. The only force that brings them together and
puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the
gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself
only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just be
cause they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-
established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an
all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advan
tage, for the common weal and in the interest of all.

196 Capitalist Production.

On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange
of. commodities, which furnishes the "Free-trader \7ulgaris"
with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he
judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can
perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis persona*.
He, who before was the money owner, now strides, in front as
capitalist ; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer.
The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on busi
ness ; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bring
ing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but —
a hiding.

PART III.

THE PRODUCTION OP ABSOLUTE SURPLUS-
VALUE.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LABOUR-PROCESS AND THE PROCESS OF PRODUCING
SURPLUS-VALUE.

SECTION 1. THE LABOUR-PROCESS OB THE PRODUCTION OF

USE-VALUES.

THE capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it; and v
labour-power in use is labour itself. The purchaser of labour- .
power consumes it by setting the seller of it to work. By v
working, the latter becomes actually, what before he only was
potentially, labour-power in action, a labourer. In order that
his labour may reappear in a commodity, he must, before all v
things, expend it on something useful, on something capable /
of satisfying a want of some sort. Hence, what the capitalist^
sets the labourer to produce, is a particular use-value, a ^/
specified article. The fact that the production of use-values,
or goods, is carried on under the control of a capitalist and
on his behalf, does not alter the general character of that
production. We shall, therefore, in the first place, have to
consider the labour-process independently of the particular
form it assumes under given social conditions.

Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man
and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord
starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between
himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of

197

198 Capitalist Production.

her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and
hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate
Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By
thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the
same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumber
ing powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway.
We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms
of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasur
able interval of time separates the state of things in which a
man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity,
from that state in which human labour was still in its first in
stinctive stage. We presuppose labour in a form that stamps
it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that
resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an
^ tLTchitect in the construction of her cells. But what distin-
^/ guishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that
\ the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects
./ it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a re-
; suit that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at
yits. commencement. He not only effects a Change of form in
vthe material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose
of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to
•J which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination
is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily
organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation,
the workman's will be steadily in consonance with his purpose.
This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the
nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on,
and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives
play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his at
tention is forced to be.

>J The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, tbe^per-
«i sonal activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that
A work, and 3, its instruments.

*J The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water)
\ in the virgin state in which it supplies1 man with necessaries

1 "The earth's spontaneous productions being in small quantity, and quite inde
pendent of man, appear, as it were, to be furnished by Nature, in the same way as a

The Labour Process. 199

or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently v
of him, and is the universal subject of humajt labour. All iX
those things which labour merely separates from immediate
connection with their environment, are subjects of labour
spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we
catch and take from their element, water, timber which we
fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their
veins. If, on the other hand, the subject of labour has, so \Q^/
say, been filtered through previous labour, we call it
material; such is ore already extracted and ready for
ing. All raw material is the subject of labour, but not every
subject of labour is raw material ; it can only become so, after vX
it has undergone some alteration by means of labour.

An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, ^/
which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject ,/
of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. ^
He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical pro
perties of some substances in order to make other substances
subservient to his aims.1 Leaving out of consideration such
ready-made means of subsistence as fruits, in gathering which*'
a man's own limbs serve as the instruments of his labour, the ^
first thing of which the labourer possesses himself is not the
subject of labour but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes
one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his
own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the
Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is hisv/
original tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones^
for throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself */
is an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agri-vX
culture implies a whole series of other instruments and a com-^
paratively high development of labour.2 No sooner does

small sum is given to a young man, in order to put him in a way of industry, and
of making his fortune." (James Steuart: "Principles of Polit. Econ." edit. Dub
lin, 1770, v. I. p. 116.)

1 "Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists principally
in her mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and re-act on each other
in accordance with their own nature, in this way, without any direct interference
in the process, carries out reason's intentions." (Hegel: "Encyklopadie, Erster
Theil. Die Logik." Berlin, 1840, p. 382.)

*In his otherwise miserable work ("Theorie de 1'Econ. Polit" Paris, 1819),
Ganilh enumerates in a striking manner in opposition to the "Physiocrats" the

,
J

200 Capitalist Production.

labour undergo the least development, than it requires specially
prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest caves we find stone
implements and weapons. In the earliest period of human
^history domesticated animals, i.e., animals which have been
bred for the purpose, and have undergone modifications by
means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour
along with specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells.1
^xThe use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although
existing in the germ among certain species of animals, is
vX specificity characteristic of the human labour-process, and
Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal.
Relics of by-gone instruments of labour possess the same im
portance for the investigation of extinct economical forms oi
society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct
species of animals. It is notJlifi-ailicles made, but how they
are^jnade, and by whaXJBstniments, that enables us to dis-
^ tinguish ^'fl^rr^t Af»nnmrn>R] ^jw^q 2 Instruments of labour
^not only supply a standard of the degree of development to
vwhich human labour has attained, but they are also indicators 1
v6f the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. J
Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature,
which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of
production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given
epoch of production, than those which, like pipe?, tubs, baskets,
jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which
latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system
of production. The latter first begins to play an important
part in the chemical industries.

In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of

long series of previous processes necessary before agriculture properly so called
can commence.

1 Turgot in his "Reflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Ricbesses"
(1766) brings well into prominence the importance of domesticated animals to
early civilisation.

* The least important commodities of all for the technological comparison of
different epochs of production are articles of luxury, in the strict meaning of the
term. However little our written histories up to this time notice the development of
material production, which is the basis of all social life, and therefore of all real
history, yet prehistoric times have been classified in accordance with the results,
hot of so called historical, but of materialistic investigations. These periods bavr
been divided, to correspond with the materials from which their implements and
weapons are made, viz., into the stone, the bronze, and the iron ages.

The Labour Process. 201

labour, in addition to those things that are used for directly
transferring labour to its subject, and which therefore, in one
way or another, serve as conductors of activity, all such objects>/y<
as are necessary for carrying on the labour-process. These do
not enter directly into the process, but without them it is either I/
impossible for it to take place at all, or possible only to
partial extent Once more we find the earth to be a universa
instrument of this sort, for it furnishes a locus standi to the
labourer and a field of employment for his activity. Among
instruments that are the result of previous labour and also
belong to this class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and
forth.

In the labour-process, therefore, man'sjactivity, with the help ^<
of the instruments of la^ojir. effects an alteration, designed -
from the commencement, in the material worked upon. The ^
process disappears in the product ; the latter is a use-value, ^
Nature's material adapted by a change of form to the wants of
man. Labour has incorporated itself with its subject : the forV
mer is materialised, the latter transformed. That which in*/
the labourer appeared as movement, now appears in the prod-
uct as a fixed quality without, motion^ The blacksmith forges
and the product is a forging.

If we examine the whole process from the point of view of •
its result, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and I/
the subject of laVjpur^ are me&ris of jrroduction.1 and that the */
labour itself is productive labour.2

Though a use-value, in the form of a product, issues from ^
the labour-process, yet other use-values, products of previous ^_
labour, enter into it as means of production. The same use- ,__
value is both the product of a previous process, and a means of ^--
production in a later process. Producig^are theref nrp nnt

results, but also jssential conditions of labour,

With tEe~exception of the extractive industries, in which ^

1 It appears paradoxical to assert, that uncaught fish, for instance, are a means of
production in the fishing industry. But hitherto no one has discovered the art of
catching fish in waters that contain none.

* This method of determining from the standpoint of the labour-process alone,
what is productive labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the
capitalist process of production.

202 Capitalist Production.

the material for labour is provided immediately by nature,
such as mining, hunting, fishing, and agriculture (so far as the
latter is confined to breaking up virgin soil), all branches of
, industry manipulate raw material, objects already filtered
through labour, already products of labour. Such is seed in
agriculture. Animals and plants, which we are accustomed to
consider as products of nature, are in their present form, not
only products of, say last year's labour, but the result of a
gradual transformation, continued through many generations,
under man's superintendence, and by means of his labour.
But in the great majority of cases, instruments of labour show
even to the most superficial observer, traces of the. labour of
past ages.

Raw material may either form the principal substance of a
^product, or it may enter into its formation only as an acces-
i/ sory. An accessory may be consumed by the instruments of
^-labour, as coal under a boiler, oil by a wheel, hay by draft-
v'' horses, or it may be mixed with the raw material in order to
-^produce some modification thereof, as chlorine into unbleached
linen, coal with iron, dye-stuff with wool, or again, it may help
v' to carry on the work itself, as in the case of the materials used
i/ for heating and lighting workshops. The distinction between
principal substance and accessory vanishes in the true chemical
industries, because there none of the raw material reappears, in
its original composition, in the substance of the product.1
^ Every object possesses various properties, and is thus capable
/ of being applied to different uses. One and the same product
v/ may therefore serve as raw material in very different processes.
J Corn, for example, is a raw material for millers, starch-manu
facturers, distillers, and cattle-breeders. It also enters as raw
material into its own production in the shape of seed : coal, too,
is at the same time the product of, and a means of production
in, coal-mining.

Again, a particular product may be used in one and the same

process, both as an instrument of labour and as raw material.

V Take, for instance, the fattening of cattle, where the animal is

1 Storch calls true raw materials "matieres," and accessory material "materiaux:"
Cherbuliez describes accessories as "matieres instrumentale*."

c&*^
The Labour Process. 203

the raw material, and at the same time an instrument for the
production of manure.

A product, though ready for immediate consumption, may^/
yet serve as raw material for a further product, as grapes when^//
they become the raw material for wine. On the other hand,*-/
labour may give us its product in such a form, that we can use ,/
it only as raw material, as is the case with cotton, thread, andv/
yarn. Such a raw material, though itself a product, may have ^/
to go through a whole series of different processes : in each of ^/
these in turn, it serves, with constantly varying form, as raw
material, until the last process of the series leaves it a perfect i/
product, ready for individual consumption, or for use as an */
instrument of labour.

Hence we see, that whether a use-value is to be regarded
raw material, as instrument of labour, or as product, this is
termined entirely by its function in the labour process, by the /
position it there occupies : as this varies, so does its character. v

Whenever therefore a product enters as a means of produc
tion into a new labour-process, it thereby loses its character of
product, and becomes a mere factor in the process. A spinner
treats spindles only as implements for spinning, and flax only
as the material that he spins. Of course it is impossible to i_
spin without material and spindles ; and therefore the existence -
of these things as products, at the commencement of the spin- ..
ning operation, must be presumed : but in the process itself, the < —
fact that they are products of previous labour, is a matter of *-
utter indifference ; just as in the digestive process, it is of no *~
importance whatever, that bread is the produce of the previous
labour of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. On the con- u
trary, it is generally by their imperfections as products, that v^_
the means of production in any process assert themselves in ^
their character as products. A blunt knife or weak threadL
forcibly remind us of Mr. A., the cutler, or Mr. B., the spinner. ^
In the finished product the labour by means of which it has '—
acquired its useful qualities is not palpable, has apparently -
vanished.

A machine which does not serve the purposes of labour, is
useless. In addition, it falls a prey to the destructive influence *-

2O4 Capitalist Production.

of natural forces. Iron rusts and wood rots. Yarn with which
we neither weave nor knit, is cotton wasted. Living labour
must seize upon these things and rouse them from their death-
sleep, change them from mere possible use-values into real and
effective ones. Bathed in the fire of labour, appropriated as
part and parcel of labour's organism, and, as it were, made
alive for the performance of their functions in the process, they
are in truth consumed, but consumed with a purpose, as ele
mentary constituents of new use-values, of new products, ever
ready as means of subsistence for individual consumption, or
as means of production for some new labour-process.

If then, on the one hand, finished products are. not only

. results, but also necessary conditions, of the labour-process, on

the other hand, their assumption into that process, their con-

- tact with living labour, is the sole means by which they can be

made to retain their character of use-values, and be utilised.

Laboju_uses up its material factors, its subject and its in-
strumejxts, consumes t]iem, and is therefore a process of con-
sumntion. Such productive consumption is distinguished
from individual consumption by this, that the latter uses up
products, as means of^subsistence for the living individual ; the
firmer, as means whereby alone, labour, the labour-power of
the living individual, is enabled tp_ act. The product, there
fore, of individual consumption, is the consumer himself; the
result of productive consumption, is a product distinct from
the consumer.

In so far then, as its instruments and subjects are themselves
products, labour consumes products in order to create products,
or in other words, consumes one set of products by turning
them into means of production for another set. But, just as
in the beginning, the only participators in the labour-process
were man and the^earth, which latter exists independently of
man, so even now we still employ in the process many means
of production, provided directly by nature, that do not repre
sent any combination of natural substances with human labour.

The labour process, resolved as above into its simple ele
mentary factors, is human action with a view to the produc
tion of use-values, appropriation of natural substances to hu-

The Labour Process. 205

man requirements; it is the necessary condition for effecting --
exchange of matter between man and Nature; it is the ever-r
lasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and *•*"
therefore is independent of every social phase of that existence, '
or rather, is common to every such phase. It was, therefore, /-
not necessary to represent our labourer in connexion with other
labourers; man and his labour one one side, Nature and its
materials on the other, sufficed. As the taste of the porridge
does not tell you who grew the oats, no more does this simple
process tell you of itself what are the social conditions under
which it is taking place, whether under the slave-owner's brutal
lash, or the anxious eye of the capitalist, whether Cincinnatus
carries it on in tilling his modest farm or a savage in killing
wild animals with stones.1

Let us now return to our would-be capitalist We left him
just after he had purchased, in the open market, all the neces
sary factors of the labouFprocess ; its objective factors, the
means of production, as well as its subjective factor, labour-^-
power. With the keen ©ye of an expert, hehad selected the
means of production and the kind of labour-power best adapted
to his particular trade, be it spinning, bootmaking, or any other
kind. He then proceeds to consume the commodity, the la- t,
bour-power that he has just bought, by causing the labourer, i- -
the impersonation of that labour-power, to consume the means
of production by his labour. The general character of the
labour-process is evidently not changed by the fact, that
labourer works for the capitalist instead of for himself ;
over, the particular methods and operations employed in boot-
making or spinning are not immediately changed by the inter
vention of the capitalist. He must begin by taking the labour-
power as he finds it in the market, and consequently be satis
fied with labour of such a kind as would be found in the period
immediately preceding the rise of the capitalists. Changes in

*By a wonderful feat of logical acumen, Colonel Torrens has discovered in this
stone of the savage the origin of capital. "In the first stone which he [the
savage] flings at the wild animal he pursues, in the stick that he seizes to strike
down the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of one
article for the purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another, and thus discover the
origin of capital. (R. Torrens: "An Esaajr on th« Production of Wealth," 4c.,
pp. 70-71.)

206 Capitalist Production.

the methods of production by the subordination of labour to
capital, can take place only at a later period, and therefore will
have to be treated of in a later chapter.

The labour-process, turned into the process by which the
capitalist consumes labour-power, exhibits two characteristic
phenomena. First, the labourer works under the control of
the capitalist to whom his labour belongs ; the capitalist taking
good care that the work is done in a proper manner, and that
the means of production are used with intelligence, so that
there is no unnecessary waste of raw material, and no wear and
tear of the implements beyond what is necessarily caused by
the work.

Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and

not that of the labourer, its immediate producer. Suppose

N that a capitalist pays for a day's labour-power at its value;

v, then the right to use that power for a day belongs to him, just

I as much as the right to use any other commodity, such as a
horse that he has hired for the day. To the purchaser of a
commodity belongs its qse. and the seller of labour-power, by
giving his labour, does no more, in reality, than part with the
' use-value that he has sold. From the instant he steps into
the workshop, the use-value of his labour-power, and therefore
also its use, which is labour, belongs to the capitalist. By the
purchase of labour-power, the capitalist incorporates labour, as
a living ferment, with the lifeless constituents of the product.
yFrom his point of view, the labour-process is nothing more
than the consumption of the commodity purchased, i.e., of
labour-power ; but this consumption cannot be effected except
by supplying the labour-power with the means of production.
The labour-process is a process between things that the capi
talist has purchased, things that have become his property.
s The product of this process also belongs, therefore, to him, just
as much as does the wine which is the product of a process of
fermentation completed in his cellar.1

1 "Products are appropriated before they are converted into capital; this conver
sion doe» not secure them from such appropriation." (Cherbuliez: "Riche ou
Pauvre," edit. Paris, 1841, pp. 53, 64.) "The Proletarian, by selling his labour for
a definite quantity of the necessaries of life, renounces all claim to a share in
the product The mode of appropriation of the products remains the same a*

The Labour Process. 207

SECTION 2. THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE.

The product appropriated by the capitalist is a use-value, as J
yarn, for example, or boots. But, although boots are, in one
sense, the basis of all social progress, and our capitalist is a
decided "progressist," yet he does not manufacture boots for
their own sake. Us^-value is, by no means, the thing "qu'on J
aime pour lui-meme" in the production of commodities. Use- \
values are only produced by capitalists, because, and in so far ,\j
as, they are the material substratum, the depositaries of ex
change-value. Our capitalist hna_frFft nV>JQ^fQ JTI Tri'mxr : in the
first place, he wants to produce a use-value that has a Yfllne
in exchange, that is to say, an article destined to be sold, a
commodity; and secondly, he desires to produce a commodity
whose value shall be greater than the sum of the values of the
commodities used in its production, that is, of the means of
production and the labour-power, that he purchased with his
good money in the open market His aim is to produce not
only a use-value, but a commodity also; not only use-value,
but value; not only value, but at the same time surplus-
value.

It must be borne in mind, that we are now dealing with the
production of commodities, and that, up to this point, we have
only considered one aspect of the process. Just as commodities
are, at the same time, use-values and values, so the process of
producing them must be a labour^racess, and at the same
time, a process of creating value.1

before; It is no way altered by the bargain we have mentioned. The product be
longs exclusively to the capitalist, who supplied the raw material and the neces
saries of life; and this is a rigorous consequence of the law of appropriation, a law
whose fundamental principle was the very opposite, namely, that every labourer has
an exclusive right to the ownership of what he produces." (1. c. p. 58.) "When
the labourers receive wages for their labour .... the capitalist is then the
owner not of the capital only" (he means the means of production) "but of the
labour also. If what is paid as wages is included, as it commonly is, in the
term capital, it is absurd to talk of labour separately from capital. The word
capital as thus employed includes labour and capital both." (James Mill: "Ele
ments of Pol. Econ.," &c., Ed. 1821, pp. 70, 71.)

1 As has been stated in a previous note, the English language has two different
expressions for these two different aspects of labour; in the Simple Labour-process,
the process of producing Use- Values, it is Work; in the process of creation of
Value, it is Labour, taking the term in its strictly economical sense. — Ed.

208 Capitalist Production.

< Let us now examine production as a creation of value.

We know that the value of each commodity is determined
by the quantity of labour expended on and materialised in it,
by the working-time necessary, under given social conditions,
for its production. This rule also holds good in the case of
the product that accrued to our capitalist, as the result of the
labour-process carried on for him. Assuming this product to
be 10 Ibs. of yarn, our first step is to calculate the quantity of
labour realised in it.

For spinning the yarn, raw material is required ; suppose in
this case 10 Ibs. of cotton. We have no need at present to
investigate the value of this cotton, for our capitalist has, we
will assume, bought it at its full value, say of ten shillings.
In this price the labour required for the production of the
cotton is already expressed in terms of the average labour of
society. We will further assume that the wear and tear of the
spindle, which, for our present purpose, may represent all other
instruments of labour employed, amounts to the value of 2s.
If, then, twenty-four hours' labour, or two working days., are
required to produce the quantity of gold represented by tjgfilve
shillings, we have here, to begin with, two days' labour already
incorporated in the yarn.

We must not let ourselves be misled by the circumstance
that the cotton has taken a new shape while the substance of
the spindle has to a certain extent been used up. By the
general law of value, if the value of 40 Ibs. of yarn = the value
of 40 Ibs. of cotton -(-the value of a whole spindle, i.e., if the
same working timers required to produce the commodities on
either side of this equation, then 10 Ibs. of yarn are an equiva
lent for 10 Ibs. of cotton, together with one-fourth of a spindle.
In the case we are considering the same working time is ma
terialised in the 10 Ibs. of yarn on the one hand, and in the 10
Ibs. of cotton and the fraction of a spindle on the other.
Therefore, whether value appears in cotton, in a spindle, or
in yarn, makes no difference in the amount of that value.
The spindle and cotton, instead of resting quietly side by side,
join together in the process, their forms are altered, and they
are turned into yarn; but their value is no more affected by

The Labour Process. 209

this fact than it would be if they had been simply exchanged
for their equivalent in yarn.

The labour required for the production of the cotton, the
raw material of the yarn, is part of the labour necessary to
produce the yarn, and is therefore contained in the yarn. The
same applies to the labour embodied in the spindle, without
whose wear and tear the cotton could not be spun.

Hence, in determining the value of the yarn, or the labour- J
time required for its production, all the special processes car-v'
ried on at various times and in different places, which were---'
necessary, first to produce the cotton and the wasted portion of v *'
the spindle, and then with the cotton and spindle to spin the-./
yarn, may together be looked on as different and successive %/
phases of one and the same process. The whole of the labour v
in the yarn is past labour ; and it is a matter of no importance
that the operations necessary for the production of its con
stituent elements were carried on at times which, referred to
the present, are more remote than the final operation of spin
ning. If a definite quantity of labour, say thirty days, is
requisite to build a house, the total amount of labour incor
porated in it is not altered by the fact that the work of the
last day is done twenty-nine days later than that of the first.
Therefore the labour contained in the raw material and the vj
instruments of labour can be treated just as if it were labour
expended in an earlier stage of the spinning process, before the v
labour of actual spinning commenced.

The values of the means of production, i.e., the cotton and^
the spindle, which values are expressed in the price of twelve
shillings, are therefore constituent parts of the value of the^
Yarn, or, in other words, of the value of the product.

Two conditions must nevertheless be fulfilled. First, the
cotton and spindle must concur in the production of a use-
value ; they must in the present case become yarn. Value is i
independent of the particular use-value by which it is borne, I
but it must be embodied in a use-value of some kind. Sec- 1
ondly, the time occupied in the labor of production must not
exceed the time really necessary under the given social con
ditions of the case. Therefore, if no more than 1 Ib. of cotton

2io Capitalist Production.

be requisite to spin 1 Ib. of yarn, care must be taken that no
more than this weight of cotton is consumed in the production
of 1 Ib. of yarn; and similarly with regard to the spindle.
Though the capitalist have a hobby, and use a gold instead of a
steel spindle, yet the only labour that counts for anything in
the value of the yarn is that which would be required to pro
duce a steel spindle, because no more is necessary under the
given social conditions.

We now know what portion of the value of the yarn is owing
to the cotton and the spindle. It amounts to twelve shillings
or the value of two days' work. The next point for our con
sideration is, what portion of the value of the yarn is added

tO the COttOn by the I^Krmr Vm irvnoy

We have now to consider this labour under a very different
aspect from that which it had during the labour-process ; there,
we viewed it solely as that particular kind of human activity
which changes cotton into yarn; there, the more the labour
was suited to the work, the better the yarn, other circumstances
remaining the same. The labour of the spinner was then
viewed as specifically different from other kinds of productive
labour, different on the one hand in its special aim, viz., spin
ning, different, on the other hand, in the special character of its
operations, in the special nature of its means of production and
in the special use-value of its product. For the operation of
spinning, cotton and spindles are a necessity, but for making
rifled cannon they would be of no use whatever. Here, on the
contrary, where we consider the labour of the spinner only so
far as it is value-creating, i.e., a source of value, his labour dif
fers in no respect from the labour of the man who bores cannon,
or (what here more nearly concerns us), from the labour of the
cotton-planter and spindle-maker incorporated in the means of
production. It is solely by reason of this identity, that cotton
planting, spindle making and spinning, are capable of forming
the component parts, differing only quantitatively from each
other, of one whole, namely, the value of the yarn. Here, we
have nothing more to do with the quality, the nature and the
specific character of the labour, but merely with its quantity.
And this simply requires to be calculated. We proceed upon

The Labour Process. 211

the assumption that spinning is simple, unskilled labour, the
average labour of a given state of society. Hereafter we shall 1
see that the contrary assumption would make no difference.

While the labourer is at work, his labour constantly under
goes a transformation : from being motion, it becomes an object
without motion ; from being the labourer working, it becomes
the thing produced. At the end of one hour's spinning, that
act is represented by a definite quantity of yarn; in other
words, a definite quantity of labour, namely that of one hour,
has become embodied in the cotton. We say labour, i.e., the
expenditure of his vital force by the spinner, and not spinning
labour, because the special work of spinning counts here, only
so far as it is the expenditure of labour-power in general, and
not in so far as it is the specific work of the spinner.

In the process we are now considering it is of extreme inW
portance, that no more time be consumed in the work of trans-'
forming the cotton into yarn than is necessary under the given
social conditions. If under normal, i.e., average social condi
tions of production, a pounds of cotton ought to be made into
b pounds of yarn by one hour's labour, then a day's labour
does not count as 12 hours' labour unless 12 a pounds of cotton
have been made into 12 b pounds of yarn; for in the creation /
of value, the time that is socially necessary alone counts.

Kot only the labour, but also the raw material and the pro-v
duct now appear in quite a new light, very different from that v
in which we viewed them in the labour-process pure and sim
ple. The raw material serves now merely as an absorbent of ^
a definite quantity of labour. By this absorption it is in fact-^
changed into yarn, because it is spun, because labour-power
in the form of spinning is added to it; but the product, the >/,
yarn, is now nothing more than a measure of the labour ab- ^
sorbed by the cotton. If in one hour 1$ Ibs. of cotton can be ^
spun into If Ibs. of yarn, then 10 Ibs. of yarn indicate the
absorption of 6 hours' labour. TVfini^ q"«*d&MMUQ£ product,
these quantities being determined by experience, now represent
nothing but definite quantities of labour, definite masses of
crystallized labour-time. They are nothing more than the

212 Capitalist Production.

J materialisation of so many hours or so many days of social
J labour.

j We are here no more concerned about the facts, that the

j labour is the specific work of spinning, that its subject is cotton

^and its product yarn, than we are about the fact that the sub-

jject itself is already a product and therefore raw material.

If the spinner, instead of spinning, were working in a coal

mine, the subject of his labour, the coal, would be supplied by

J . Nature ; nevertheless, a definite quantity of extracted coal, a

J hundred weight, for example, would represent a definite quan-

' tity of absorbed labour.

We assumed, on the occasion of its sale, that the value of
a day!a labour-power is tiw^e- shillings, and that six hours' la-
bour are incorporated in that sum ; and consequently that this
amount of labour is requisite to produce the necessaries of life
daily required on an average by the labourer. If now our
spinner by working for one hour, can convert If Ibs. of cotton
into If Ibs. of yarn,1 it follows that in six hours he will convert
/ 10 Ibs. of cotton into 10 Ibs. of yarn. Hence, during the spin-
^ process, the cotton absorbs six hours' labour. The same

uantity of labour is also embodied in a piece of gold of the
\/value of three shillingsJ w Consequently by the mere labour of
v/spinning, a value of three shillings is added to the cotton.

Let us now consider the total value of the product, the 10
Ibs. of yarn. Two and a half days' labour have been embodied
in it, of which two days were contained in the cotton and in
the substance of the spindle worn away, and half a day was
absorbed during the process of spinning. This two and a half
days' labour is also represented by a piece of gold of the value
of fifteen shillings. Hence, fifteen shillings is an adequate
price for the 10 Ibs. of yarn, or the price of one pound is eight-
een-pence.

Our capitalist stares in astonishment. The value of the
product is exactly equal to the value of the capital advanced.
The value so advanced has not expanded, no surplus-value has
been created, and consequently money has not been converted
into capital. The price of the yarn is fifteen shillings, and

1 These figure* are quite arbitrary.

The Labour Process. 213

fifteen shillings were spent in the open market upon the con
stituent elements of the product, or, what amounts to the same
thing, upon the factors of the labour-process ; ten shillings were
paid for the cotton, two shillings for the substance of the spin
dle worn away, and three shillings for the labour-power. The
ewollen value of the yarn is of no avail, for it is merely the
sum of the values formerly existing in the cotton, the spindle,
and the labour-power ; out of such a simple addition of existing
values, no surplus-value can possibly arise.1 These separate
values are now all concentrated in one thing ; but so they were j
also in the sum of fifteen shillings, before it was split up into /
three parts, by the purchase of the commodities.

There is in reality nothing very strange in this result. The
value of one pound of yarn being eighteenpence, if our capita
list buys 10 Ibs. of yarn in the market, he must pay fifteen
shillings for them. It is clear that, whether a man buys his
house ready built, or gets it built for him, in neither case will
the mode of acquisition increase the amount of money laid out
on the house.

Our capitalist, who is at home in his vulgar economy, ex
claims : "Oh ! but I advanced my money for the express pur
pose of making more money." The way to Hell is paved with
good intentions, and he might just as easily have intended to
make money, without producing at all.2 He threatens all sorts
of things. He won't be caught napping again. In future he
will buy the commodities in the market, instead of manufac
turing them himself. But if all his brother capitalists were to
do the same, where would he find his commodities in the mar
ket? And his money he cannot eat. He tries persuasion.

1 This is the fundamental proposition on which is based the doctrine of the
Physiocrats as to the unproductiveness of all labour that is not agriculture: it is
irrefutable for the orthodox economist. "Cette fac.on d'imputer a une seule chose
la valeur de plusieurs autres" (par exemple au lin la consommation du tisserand),
"d'appliquer, pour ainsi dire, couche sur couche, plusieurs valeurs sur une seule,
fait que celle-ci grossit d'autant . . . . Le terme d'addition peint tres-bien la
maniere dont se forme le prix des ouvrages de main-d'ceuvre; ce prix n'est qu'un
total de plusieurs valeurs consommees et additionees ensemble; or, additionner n'est
pas multiplier." ("Mercier de la Riviere," 1. c., p. 599.)

* Thus from 1844-47 he withdrew part of his capital from productive employment,
in order to throw it away in railway speculations; and so also, during the Ameri
can Civil War, he closed his factory, and turned his work-people into the streets,
in order to gamble on the Liverpool cotton exchange.

214 Capitalist Production.

"Consider my abstinence; I might have played ducks and
drakes with the 15 shillings; but instead of that I consumed
it productively, and made yarn -with it." Very well, and by
way of reward he is now in possession of good yarn instead
of a bad conscience; and as for playing the part of a miser,
it would never do for him to relapse into such bad ways as
that; we have seen before to what results such asceticism
leads. Besides, where nothing is, the king has lost his rights :
whatever may be the merit of his abstinence, there is nothing
wherewith specially to remunerate it, because the value of the
product is merely the sum of the values of the commodities
that were thrown into the process of production. . Let him
therefore console himself with the reflection that virtue is its
own reward. But no, he becomes importunate. He says:
"The yarn is of no use to me: I produced it for sale." In
that case let him sell it, or, still better, let him for the future
produce only things for satisfying his personal wants, a rem
edy that his physician M'Culloch has already prescribed as
infallible against an epidemic of over-production. He now
gets obstinate. "Can the labourer," -he asks, "merely with
his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing ? Did
I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and
in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the
greater part of society consists of such ne'er-do-weels, have I
not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments
of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not only society,
but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with
the necessaries of life ? And am I to be allowed nothing in
return for all this service?" Well, but has not the labourer
rendered him the equivalent service of changing his cotton
and spindle into yarn ? Moreover, there is here no question of
service.1 A service is nothing more than the useful effect of

1 Extol thyself, put on finery and adorn thyself . . . but whoever takes more
or better than he gives, that is usury, and is not service, but wrong done to his
neighbour, as when one steals and robs. All is not service and benefit to a neigh
bour that is called service and benefit For an adulteress and adulterer do one
another great service and pleasure. A horseman does an incendiary a great serv
ice, by helping him to rob on the highway, and pillage land and houses. The
papists do ours a great service in that they don't drown, burn, murder all of
them, or let them all rot in prison; but let some live, and only drive them out,

The Labour Process. 215

a use-value, be it of a commodity, or be it of labour.1 But
here we are dealing with exchange-value. The capitalist paid
to the labourer a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave
him back an exact equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added
by him to the cotton: he gave him value for value. Our
friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the
modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims : "Have
I myself not worked? Have I not performed the labour of
superintendence and of overlooking the spinner ? And does
not this labour, too, create value ?" His overlooker and his
manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after a hearty
laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to
us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he
would not give a brass farthing for it. He leaves this and all
such like subterfuges and juggling tricks to the professors of
political economy, who are paid for it. He himself is a prac
tical man; and though he does not always consider what he
says outside his business, yet in his business he knows what
he is about.

Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a
dfly'a ]flhrmr-pmyer amounts to 3 shillings, because on our as-
sumption half a day's labour is embodied in that quantity of
labour-power, i.e., because the means of subsistence that are
dally required for the production of labour-power, cost half a
day's labour. But the past labour that is embodied in the
labour-power, and the living labour that it can call into action ;
the daily cost of maintaining it,, and its daily expenditure in v'
work, are two totally different things.* The former determines "*
the exchange-value of the labour-power, the latter is its use-''
value. The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to
the labourer alive during 24 Virmra., does not in any way pre
vent him f™m wHqnfi n Tvhvlft day Therefore, the^value of
labour-power, and the value which_that labour-power creates

or take from them what they have. The devil himself does his servants inestimable
service . . . To sum up, the world is full of great, excellent, and daily service
and benefit." (Martin Luther: "An die Pfarherrn, wider den Wucher zu
piedigen," Wittenberg, 1540.)

*In "Critique of Pol. EC.," p. 34, I make the following remark on this point — "It
is not difficult to understand what 'service' the category 'service* must render to a
class of economists like J. B. Say and F. Bastiat."

216 Capitalist Production.

in foe labour process, are two entirely different magnitudes ;
and this difference of the two values was what the capitalist
had in view, when he was purchasing the labour-power. The
useful qualities that labour-power possesses, and by virtue of
which it makes yarn or boots, were to him nothing more than
a conditio sine qua non; for in order to create value, labour
must be expended in a useful manner. What really influenced
him was the specific use-value which this commodity possesses
of being a source not only of value, but of more value than it
has itpelf. This is the special service that the capitalist ex
pects from labour-power, and in this transaction he acts in ac
cordance with the "eternal laws" of the exchange of commodi-
^ ties. The seller of labour-power, like the seller of any other
./commodity, realises its exchange-value, and parts wiiji ita HM-
i/ value. He cannot take the one without giving the other. The
use-value ?* ]flbonr-pmvp.rT nr in other wordsr labour, belongs
j just as little to its seller, as the use-value of oil after it has
been sold belongs to the dealer who has sold it The owner
of the money has paid the value of a day's labour-power ; his,
herefore, is the ujse of it for a day ; a day's labour__hglongs to
C^fhim. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sus
tenance of labour-power costs only half ajiay's labour, while
> on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during
, ^ a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during
v one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this cir-
y -/cumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the
\ ) ^uyer, but by no means an injury to the seller.

Our capitalist foresaw this state of things, and that was the
cause of his laughter. The labourer therefore finds, in the
workshop, the means of production necessary for working, not
only during six, but during twelve hours. Just as during the
six hours' process our 10 Ibs. of cotton absorbed six hours'
labour, and became 10 Ibs. of yarn, so now, 20 Ibs. of cotton
will absorb 12 hours' labour and be changed into 20 Ibs. of
yarn. Let us now examine the product of this prolonged
process. There is now materialised in this ^0 Ibs. of yarn the
labour of five days, of which four days are due to the cotton
and the lost steel of the spindle, the remaining day having

abour Process. 217

been absorbed by the cotton during the spinning process. Ex- '
pressed in gold, the labour of five days is thirty shillings.
This is therefore the price of the 20 Ibs. of yarn, giving, as
before, eighteenpence as the price of a pound. But the sum
of the values of the commodities that entered into the process
amounts to 27 shillings. The value of the yarn is 30 shillings.
Therefore the value of the product is ^ greater than the value
advanced for its production ; 27 shillings have been trans
formed into 30 shillings ; a surplus-value of 3 shillings has
been created. The trick has at last succeeded; money has
been converted into capital.

Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while thq laws
that regulate the exchange of commodities, have been in no
way violated. Equivalent has been exchanged for ~~": — 1 — *

For the capitalist as buyer paid for each commodity, for the /
cotton, the spindle and the labour-power, its full value. He /
then did what is done by every purchaser of commodities ; TieV
consumed their use-value. The consumption of the labour- •
power, which was also the process of producing commodities,
resulted in 20 Ibs. of yarn, having a value of 30 shillings.
The capitalist, formerly a buyer, now returns to market as a /
seller, of commodities. He sells his yarn at eighteenpence a^
pound, which is its exact value. Yet for all that he with-"'
draws 3 shillings more from circulation than he originally v
threw into it. This metamorphosis, this conversion of money
into capital, takes place both within the sphere of circulation
and also outside it; within the circulation, because conditioned
by the purchase of the labour-power in t.hp. market ; outside the
circulation, because what is done within it is only a stepping-
stone to the production of surplus-value, a process which is
entirely confined to the sphere of production. Thus "tout est
pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles."

By turning his money into commodities that serve as the
material elements of a new product, and as factors in the la
bour-process, by incorporating living labour with their dead
substance, the capitalist at the same time converts value, i.e.,
past, materialised, and dead labour into capital, into value big
with value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies.

218 Capitalist Production.

\ If we now compare the two processes of producing value and
\ of creating surplus-value, we see that the latter is nothing but
^the continuation of the former beyond a definite point. If on
the one hand the process be not Carried beyond the point,
x where the value paid by the capitalist^ for the labour-power is
replaced by an exact equivalent, it is simply a process of pro
ducing value; if, on the other hand, it be continued beyond
that point, it becomes a process of creating surplus-value.

If we proceed further, and compare the process^pf producing
x value with the labour-process, pure and simple, we find that
i the latter consists of the useful labour, the work, that produces
use-values. Here we contemplate the labour as producing a
particular article ; we view it under its qualitative aspect alone,
with regard to its end and aim. But viewed as a valujs-creat-
ing process, the same labour-process presents itself under its
* quantitative aspect alone. Here it is a question merely of the
. time_ occupied by the labourer in doing; the \yorjt ; of the period
during which the labour-power is usefully expended. Here,
v the commodities that take part in the process, do not count
any longer as necessary adjuncts of labour-power in the pro
duction of a definite, useful object. They count merely as
depositaries of so much absorbed or materialised labour; that
labour, whether previously embodied in the means of produc
tion, or incorporated in them for the first time during the
process by the action of labour-power, counts in either case
only according to its duration ; it amounts to so many hours or
days as the case may be.

Moreover, only so much of the time spent in the production
of any article is counted, as, under the given social conditions,
is necessary. The consequences of this are various. In the
first place, it becomes necessary that the labour should be
carried on under normal conditions. If a self-acting mule is
the implement in general use for spinning, it would be absurd
to supply the spinner with a distaff and spinning wheel. The
cotton too must not be such rubbish as to cause extra waste in
being worked, but must be of suitable quality. Otherwise the
spinner would be found to spend more timo in producing a
pound of yarn than is socially necessary, in which case the

The Labour Process. 219

excess of time would create neither value nor money. But
whether the material factors of the process are of normal
quality or not, depends not upon the labourer, but entirely
upon the capitalist. Then again, the labour-power itself must
be of average efficacy. In the trade in which it is being em
ployed, it must possess the average skill, handiness and quick
ness prevalent in that trade, and our capitalist took good care
to buy labour-power of such normal goodness. This power
must be applied with the average amount of exertion and with
the usual degree of intensity; and the capitalist is as careful
to see that this is done, as that his workmen are not idle for a
single moment. He has bought the use of the labour-power
for a definite period, and he insists upon his rights. He has
no intention of being robbed. Lastly, and for this purpose our \/
friend has a penal code of his own, all wasteful consumption of^
raw material or instruments of labour is strictly forbidden, be-.1-'
cause what is so wasted, represents labour superfluously ex-|uX
pended, labour that does not count in the product or enter into'-
its value.1

We now see, that the difference between labour, considered *
on the one hand as producing utilities, and on the other hand, ^

1 This is one of the circumstances that makes production by slave labour such
a costly process. The labourer here is, to use a striking expression of the ancients,
distinguishable only as instrumentum vocale, from an animal as instrumentum
semi-vocale, and from an implement as instrumentum mutum. But he himself
takes care to let both beast and implement feel that he is none of them, but is a
man. He convinces himself with imnvnse satisfaction, that he is a different being,
by treating the one unmercifully and damaging the other con amore. Hence the
principle, universally applied in this method of production, only to employ the rudest
and heaviest implements and such as are difficult to damage owing to their sheer
clumsiness. In the slave-states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, down to the date
of the civil war, ploughs constructed on old Chinese models, which turned up the
soil like a hog or a mole, instead of making furrows, were alone to be found. Conf.
J. C. Cairns. "The Slave Power," London, 1862, p. 46-49. In his "Sea Board
Slave States," Olmsted tells us: "I am here shown tools that no man in his senses,
with us, would allow a labourer, for whom he was paying wages, to be incumbered
with; and the excessive weight and clumsiness of which, I would judge, would make
work at least ten per cent greater than with those ordinarily used with us. And I
am assured that, in the careless and clumsy way they must be used by the slaves,
anything lighter or less rude could not be furnished them with good economy, and
that such tools as we constantly give our labourers and find our profit in giving
them, would not last out a day in a Virginia cornfield — much lighter and more
free from stones though it be than ours. So, too, when I ask why mules are so
universally substituted for horses on the farm, the first reason given, and confessedly
the most conclusive one, is that horses cannot bear the treatment that they always
must get from the negroes; horses are always soon foundered or crippled by them,

22O Capitalist Production.

v^ as creating value, a difference which we discovered bj- our
analysis of a commodity, resolves itself into a distinction be
tween two aspects of the process of production.

The process of production, considered on the one hand as

. 1 the unity of the labour-process and the process overeating

* value, is production of commodities ; considered on the other

hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process of pro-

jducing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production,

JOT capitalist production of commodities.

We stated, on a previous page, that in the creation of
surplus-value it does not in the least matter, whether the labour
appropriated by the capitalist be simple unskilled labour of
average quality or more complicated skilled labour. All
labour of a higher or more complicated character than averago
labour is expenditure of labour-power of a more costly kind,
labour-power whose production has cost more time and labour,
and which therefore has a higher value, than unskilled or
simple labour-power. This power being of higher value, its
consumption is labour of a higher class, labour that creates ir
equal times proportionally higher values than unskilled labour
does. Whatever difference in skill there may be between the

v labour of a spinner and that of a jeweller, the portion of his
labour by which the jeweller merely replaces the value of his

1 own labour-power, does not in any way differ in quality from
the additional gortioji by which he creates surplus-value. In \
the making of jewellery, just as in spinning, the surplus-value
results only from a quantitative excess of labour, from a
lengthening-out of one and the same labour-process, in the one
case, of the process of making jewels, in the other of the pro
cess of making yarn.1

while mules will bear cudgelling, or lose a meal or two now and then, and not be
materially injured, and they do not take cold or get sick, if neglected or over
worked. But I do not need to go further than the window of the room in which I
am writing, to see at almost any time, treatment of cattle that would ensure the im
mediate discharge of the driver by almost any farmer owning them in the North.**

1 The distinction between skilled and unskilled labour rests in part on pure illu
sion, or, to say the least, on distinctions that have long since ceased to be real, and
that survive only by virtue of a traditional convention; in part on the helpless con
dition of some groups of the working-class, a condition that prevents them from
exacting equally with the rest the value of their labour-power. Accidental cir
cumstances here play so great a part, that these two forms of labour sometimes

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 221

But on the other hand, in every process of creating value,
the reduction of skilled labour to average social labour, e.g.,
one day of skilled to six days of unskilled labour, is un
avoidable.1 We therefore save ourselves a superfluous oper
ation, and simplify our analysis, by the assumption, that the
labour of the workman employed by the capitalist is unskilled
average labour.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONSTANT CAPITAL AND VABIABLE CAPITAL.

THE various factors of the labour-process play different parts
in forming the value of the product.

The labourer adds fresh value to the subject of his labour
by expending upon it a given amount of additional labour, no
matter what the specific character and utility of that labour
may be. On the other hand, the values of the means of pro
duction used up in the process are preserved, and present

change places. Where, for instance, the physique of the working-class has deterio
rated, and is, relatively speaking, exhausted, which is the case In all countries with a
well developed capitalist production, the lower forms of labour which demand great
expenditure of muscle, are in general considered as skilled, compared with much
more delicate forms of labour; the latter sink down to the level of unskilled labour.
Take as an example the labour of a bricklayer, which in England occupies a much
higher level than that of a damask-wearer. Again, although the labour of a fustian
cutter demands great bodily exertion, and is at the same time unhealthy, yet it
counts only as unskilled labour. And then, we must not forget, that the so-called
skilled labour does not occupy a large space in the field of national labour. Laing
estimates that in England (and Wales) the livelihood of 11,800,000 people depends
on unskilled labour. If from the total population of 18,000,000 living at the time
when he wrote, we deduct 1,000,000 for the "genteel population," and 1,600,000
for paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes, 4c., and 4,650,000 who compose the
middle-class, there remain the above mentioned 11,000,000. But in his middle-class
he includes people that live on the interest of small investments, officials, men of
letters, artists, schoolmasters and the like, and in order to swell the number he also
includes in these 4,650,000 the better paid portion of the factory operatives 1 The
bricklayers, too, figure amongst them. (S. Laing: "National Distress," &c., London,
1844.) "The great class who have nothing to give for food but ordinary labour, are
the great bulk of the people." (James Mill, in art: "Colony," Supplement to the
Encyclop. Brit., 1831.)

1 "Where reference is made to labour as a measure of value, it necessarily implies
labour of one particular kind . . .the proportion which the other kinds bear to it
being easily ascertained." ("Outlines of Pol. Econ.," Lond., 1832, pp. 22 and 23.)

222 Capitalist Production.

themselves afresh as constituent parts of the value of the pro
duct ; the values of the cotton and the spindle, for instance, re
appear again in the value of the yarn. The value of the
means of production is therefore preserved, by being trans
ferred to the product. This transfer takes place during the
conversion of those means into a product, or in other words,
during the labour-process. It is brought about by labour; but
how ?

The labourer does not perform two operations at once, one
in order to add value to the cotton, the other in order to pre
serve the value of the means of production, or, in what amounts
to the same thing, to transfer to the yarn, to the product, the
value of the cotton on which he works, and part of the valuo
of the spindle with which he works. But, by the very act o:f
adding new value, he preserves their former values. Since,
however, the addition of new value to the subject of his labour,
and the preservation of its former value, are two entirely dis
tinct results, produced simultaneously by the labourer, during
one operation, it is plain that this twofold nature of the re
suit can be explained only by the twofold nature of his labour
at one and the same time, it must in one character create value,
and in another character preserve or transfer value.

Now, in what manner does every labourer add new labour
and consequently new value ? Evidently, only by labouring
productively in a particular way ; the spinner by spinning, the
weaver by weaving, the smith by forging. But, while thus
incorporating labour generally, that is value, it is by the par
ticular form alone of the labour, by the spinning, the weaving
and the forging respectively, that the means of production, the
cotton and spindle, the yarn and loom, and the iron and anvil
become constituent elements of the product, of a new use-
value.1 Each use-value disappears, but only to re-appear
under a new form in a new use-value. Now, we saw, when
we were considering the process of creating value, that, if a
use-value be effectively consumed in the production of a new
use-value, the quantity of labour expended in the production

1 "Labour give* a new creation for one extinguished." ("A» essay on the Polit.
Econ. of Nations," London, 1881, p. 13.)

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 223

of the consumed article, forms a portion of the quantity of
labour necessary to produce the new use-value ; this portion is
therefore labour transferred from the means of production to
the newjDrpduct. Hence, the labourer preserves the values of
the consumed means of production, or transfers them as por
tions of its value to the product, not by virtue of his additional
labour, abstractedly considered, but by virtue of the particular
useful character of that labour, by virtue of its special pro
ductive form. In so far then as labour is such specific produc
tive activity, in so far as it is spinning, weaving, or forging,
it raises, by mere contact, the means of production from the
dead, makes them living factors of the labour-process, and
combines with them to form the new products.

If the special productive labour of the workman were not
spinning, he could not convert the cotton into yarn, and there
fore could not transfer the values of the cotton and spindle to
the yarn. Suppose the same workman were to change his
occupation to that of a joiner, he would still by a day's labour
add value to the material he works upon. Consequently, we
see, first, that the addition of new value takes place not by
virtue of his labour being spinning in particular, or joinering
in particular, but because it is labour in the abstract, a portion
of the total labour of society ; and we see next, that the value
added is of a given definite amount, not because his laTxmr
has a special utility, but because it is exerted^forajl£finite
time. On the one hand, then, it is by virtue^of itsgeneral
character, as being expenditure of human labour-power in the
abstract, that spinning adds new value to the values of the
cotton and the spindle; and on the other hand, it is by virtue
of its special character, as being a concrete, useful process, that
the same labour of spinning both transfers the values of the
means of production to the product, and preserves them in the
product. Hence at one and the same time there is produced a
twofold result

By the simple addition of a certain quantity of labour,
new value is added, and by the quality of this added labour,
the original values of the means of production are preserved
in the product This twofold effect, resulting from the two-

224 Capitalist Production.

fold character of labour, may be traced in various phenomena.
Let us assume, that some invention enables the spinner to
spin as much cotton in, 6 hours as he was able to spin before in
36 hours. His labour is now six times as effective as it was,
for the purposes of useful production. The product of 6
hours' work has increased sixfold, from 6 Ibs. to 36 Ibs. But
now the 36 Ibs. of cotton absorb only the same amount of
labour as formerly did the 6^1bs. One-sixth as much new
labour is absorbed by each pound of _ cotton, and consequently,
the value added by the labour to each pound is only one-sixth
of what it formerly was. On the other hand, in the product,
in the 36 Ibs. of yarn, the value transferred from the cotton i;i
six times as great as before. By the 6 hours' spinning, tho
value of the raw material preserved and transferred to thu
product is six times as great as before, although the new value
added by the labour of the spinner to each pound of the very
same raw material is one-sixth what it was formerly. Thiti
shows that the two properties of labour, by virtue of whict
it is enabled in one case to preserve value, and in the other to
create value, are essentially different. On the one hand, the
longer the time necessary to spin a given weight of cotton intc
yarn, the greater is the new value added to the material; on
the other hand, the greater the weight of the cotton spun in a J
given time, the greater is the value preserved, by being trans- '
ferred from it to the product.

Let us now assume, that the productiveness of the spinner's
labour, instead of varying, remains constant, that he therefore
requires the same time as he formerly did, to convert one
pound of cotton into yarn, but that the exchange value of the
cotton^varies, either by rising to six times its former value or
falling to one-sixth of that value. In both these cases, the
spinner puts the same quantity of labour into a pound of cot
ton, and therefore adds as much value, as he did before the
change in the value : he also produces a given weight of yarn in
the same time as he did before. Nevertheless, the value that
he transfers from the cotton to the yarn is either one-sixth
of what it was before the variation, or, as the case may be,
eix times as much as before. The same result occurs when the

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 225

value of the instruments of labour rises or falls, while their
useful efficacy in the process remains unaltered.

Again, if the technical conditions of the spinning process re
main unchanged, and no change of value takes place in the
means of production, the spinner continues to consume in
equal working-times equal quantities of raw material, and
equal quantities of machinery of unvarying value. The value
that he preserves in the product is directly proportional to the
new value that he adds to the product. In two weeks he incor
porates twice as much labour, and therefore twice as much
value, as in one week, and during the same time he consumes
twice as much material, and wears out twice as much ma
chinery, of double the value in each case; he therefore pre
serves, in the product of two weeks, twice as much value as in
the product of one week. So long as the conditions of produc
tion remain the same, the more value the labourer adds by
fresh labour, the more value he transfers and preserves; but
he does so merely because this addition of new value takes place
under conditions that have not varied and are independent of
his own labour. Of course, it may be said in one sense, that
the labourer preserves old value always in proportion to the
quantity of new value that he adds. Whether the value of
cotton rise from one shilling to two shillings, or fall to six
pence, the workman invariably preserves in the product of one
hour only one half as much value as he preserves in two hours.
In like manner, if the productiveness of his own labour varies
by rising or falling, he will in one hour spin either more or less
cotton, as the case may be, than he did before, and will con
sequently preserve in the product of one hour, more or less
value of cotton; but, all the same, he will preserve by two
hours' labour twice as much value as he will by one.

Value exists only in articles of utility, in objects : we leave
out of consideration its purely symbolical representation by
tokens. (Man himself, viewed as the impersonation of labour-
power, is a natural object, a thing, although a living conscious
thing, and labour is the manifestation of this power residing
in him.) If therefore an article loses it utility, it also loses
its value. The reason why means of production do not lose

226 Capitalist Production.

their value, at the same time that they lose their use-value, is
this : they lose in the labour-process the original form of their
use-value, only to assume in the product the form of a new use-
value. But, however important it may be to value, that i~
should have some object of utility to embody itself in, yet k
is a matter of complete indifference what particular object
serves this purpose; this we saw when treating of the meta
morphosis of commodities. Hence it follows that in the
labour-process the means of production transfer their value;
to the product only so far as along with their use-value they
lose also their exchange value. They give up to the produce
that value alone which they themselves lose as means of pro
duction. But in this respect the material factors of the labour -
process do not all behave alike.

The coal burnt under the boiler vanishes without leaving a
trace; so, too, the tallow with which the axles of wheels aro
greased. Dye stuffs and other auxiliary substances also vanish
but re-appear as properties of the product. Raw material
forms the substance of the product, but only after it ha 3
changed its form. Hence raw material and auxiliary sub
stances lost the characteristic form with which they are clothed
on entering the labour-process. It is otherwise with the in
struments of labour. Tools, machines, workshops, and vessels,
are of use in the labour-process, only so long as they retain
their original shape, and are ready each morning to renew tho
process with their shape unchanged. And just as during thei *
lifetime, that is to say, during the continued labour-process in
which they serve, they retain their shape independent of tho
product, so, too, they do after their death. The corpses of
machines, tools, workshops, &c., are always separate and dis
tinct from the product they helped to turn out. If we now
consider the case of any instrument of labour during the whol 3
period of its service, from the day of its entry into the work
shop, till the day of its banishment into the lumber room, WB
find that during this period its use-value has been completely
consumed, and therefore its exchange value completely trans
ferred to the product. For instance, if a spinning machina
lasts for 10 years, it is plain that during that working perio 1

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 227

its total value is gradually transferred to the product of the
10 years. The lifetime of an instrument of labour, therefore,
is spent in the repetition of a greater or less number of similar
operations. Its life may be compared with that of a human
being. Every day brings a man 24 hours nearer to his grave :
but how many days he has still to travel on that road, no man
can tell accurately by merely looking at him. This difficulty,
however, does not prevent life insurance offices from drawing,
by means of the theory of averages, very accurate, and at the
same time very profitable conclusions. So it is with the instru
ments of labour. It is known by experience how long on the
average a machine of a particular kind will last. Suppose its
use-value in the labour-process to last only six days. Then,
on the average, it loses each day one-sixth of its use-value, and
therefore parts with one-sixth of its value to the daily product
The wear and tear of all instruments, their daily loss of use-
value, and the corresponding quantity of value they part with
to the product, are accordingly calculated upon this basis.

It is thus strikingly clear, that means of production never
transfer jjiacfi-5Lalu^.to the product than they themselves lose
during the labour-process by the destructionjof their. -own use-
value. If such an instrument has no value to lose, if, in other
words, it is not the product of human labour, it transfers no
value to the product. It helps to create use-value without con
tributing to the formation of exchange value. In this class
are included all means of production supplied by Nature with
out human assistance, such as land, wind, water, metals in
situ, and timber in virgin forests.

Yet another interesting phenomenon here presents itself.
Suppose a machine to be worth £1000, and to wear out in 1000
days. Then one thousandth part of the value of the machine
is daily transferred to the day's product. At the same time,
though with diminishing vitality, the machine as a whole con
tinues to take part in the labour-process. Thus it appears
that one factor of the labour-process, a means of production,
continually enters as a whole into that process, while it enters
into the process of the formation of value by fractions only.
The difference between the two processes is here reflected in

228 Capitalist Production.

their material factors, by the same instrument of production
taking part as a whole in the labour-process, while at the same
time as an element in the formation of value, it enters only by
fractions.1

On the other hand, a means of production may take part as a
whole in the formation of value, while into the labour-process
it enters only bit by bit. Suppose that in spinning cotton, the
waste for every 115 Ibs. used amounts to 15 Ibs., which is con
verted, not into yarn, but into "devil's dust." Now, although
this 15 Ibs. of cotton never becomes a constituent element of
the yarn, yet assuming this amount of waste to be normal and
inevitable under average conditions of spinning,- its value is
just as surely transferred to the value of the yarn, as is the
value of the 100 Ibs. that form the substance of the yarn. The
use-value of 15 Ibs. of cotton must vanish into dust, before 100
Ibs. of yarn can be made. The destruction of this cotton is
therefore a necessary condition in the production of the yarn.
And because it is a necessary condition, and for no other rea
son, the value of that cotton is transferred to the product.
The same holds good for every kind of refuse resulting from a
labour-process, so far at least as such refuse cannot be furttnr
employed as a means in the production of new and independent

1 The subject of repairs of the implements of labour does not concern us here. A
machine that is undergoing repair, no longer plays the part of an instrument, 1 ut
that of a subject of labour. Work is no longer done with it, but upon it. It is
quite permissible for our purpose to assume, that the labour expended on the repairs
of instruments is included in the labour necessary for their original production.
But in the text we deal with that wear and tear, which no doctor can cure, and
which little by little brings about death, with "that kind of wear which cannot be
repaired from time to time, and which, in the case of a knife, would ultimately re
duce it to a state in which the cutler would say of it, it is not worth a new bladr."
We have shewn in the text, that a machine takes part in every labour-process as an
integral machine, but that into the simultaneous process of creating value it enters
only bit by bit. How great then is the confusion of ideas exhibited in the following
extract! "Mr. Ricardo says a portion of the labour of the engineer in making
[stocking] machines" is contained for example in the value of a pair of stockin js.
"Yet the total labour, that produced each single pair of stockings .... in
cludes the whole labour of the engineer, not a portion; for one machine makes many
pairs, and none of those pairs could have been done without any part of the ma
chine." ("Obs. on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ. particularly relating to
value," p. 54.) The author, an uncommonly self-satisfied wiseacre, is right in hi*
confusion and therefore in his contention, to this extent only, that neither Ricardo
nor any other economist, before or since him, has accurately distinguished the t vo
a«pect« of labour, and still less, therefore, the pan played by it under each of th«s«
«*pect» in the formation of value.

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 229

use-values. Such an employment of refuse may be seen in the
large machine works at Manchester, where mountains of iron
turnings are carted away to the foundry in the evening, in
order the next morning to re-appear in the workshops as solid
masses of iron.

We have seen that the means of production transfer value to
the new product, so far only as during the labour-process they
lose value in the shape of their old use-value. The maximum
loss of value that they can suffer in the process, is plainly
limited by the amount of the original value with which they
came into the process, or in other words, by the labour-time
necessary for their production. Therefore the means oj
duction can never add more value to the product than they
themselves possessj^gppnrlently^f Jjie process in which they
assist. However useful a given kind of raw material, or a
machine, or other means of production may be, though it may
cost £150, or, say, 500 days' labour, yet it cannot, under any
circumstances, add to the value of the product more than £150.
Its value is determined not by the labour-process into which it
enters as a means of production, but by that out of which it has
issued as a product. In the labour-process it only serves as a
mere use-value, a thing with useful properties, and could not,
therefore, transfer any value to the product, unless it possessed
such value previously.1

1 From this we may judge of the absurdity of J. B. Say, who pretends to account \
for surplus-value (Interest, Profit, Rent), by the "services productifs" which the \
means of production, soil, instruments, and raw material, render in the labour-proc
ess by means of their use-values. Mr. \Vm. Roscher who seldom loses an occasion
of registering, in black and white, ingenious apologetic fancies, records the following
specimen: — "J. B. Say (Trait*, t. 1. ch. 4) very truly remarks: the value produced
by an oil mill, after deduction of all costs, is something new, something quite differ-
ent from the labour by which the oil mill itself was erected." (1. c., p. 82, note.)
Very true, Mr. Professor! the oil produced by the oil mill is indeed something very
different from the labour expended in constructing the mill! By value, Mr. Roscher
understands such stuff as "oil," because oil has value, notwithstanding that "Na
ture" produces petroleum, though relatively "in small quantities," a fact to which
he seems to refer in his further observation: "It (Nature) produces scarcely any
exchange value." Mr. Roscber's "Nature" and the exchange value it produces are
rather like the foolish virgin who admitted indeed that she had had a child, but "it
was such a little one." This "savant serieux" in continuation remarks: "Ricardo's
school is in the habit of including capital as accumulated labour under the head of
labour. This is unskilful work, because, indeed, the owner of capital, after all, does
something more than the merely creating and preserving of the same: namely, the
abstention from the enjoyment of it, for which he demands, t.g., interest." (1. c.)

23° Capitalist Production.

While productive labour is changing the means of produc
tion into constituent elements of a new product, their value
undergoes a metempsychosis. It deserts the consumed body,
to occupy the newly created one. But this transmigration
takes place, as it were, behind the back of the labourer. He
is unable to add new labour, to create new value, without at
the same time preserving old values, and this, because the
labour he adds must be of a specific useful kind ; and he can
not do work of a useful kind, without employing products as
the means of production of a new product, and thereby trans
ferring their value to the new product. The property there
fore which labour-power in action, living labour, .possesses of
preserving value, at the same time that it adds it, is a gift of
Nature which costs the labourer nothing, but which is very
advantageous to the capitalist inasmuch as it preserves the
existing value of his capital.1 So long as trade is good, the
capitalist is too much absorbed in money-grubbing to take
notice of this gratuitous gift of labour. A violent interruption
of the labour-process by a crisis, makes him sensitively awaie
of it.2

As regards the means of production, what is really consumed
is their use-value, and the consumption of this use-value by
labour results in the product. There is no consumption cf

How very "skilful" is this "anatomico-physiological method" of political economy,
which, "indeed," converts a mere desire "after all" into a source of value.

1 "Of all the instruments of the farmers' trade, the labour of man ... is that en
which he is most to rely for the repayment of his capital. The other two . . . the
working stock of the cattle and the . . . carts, ploughs, spades, and so forti,
without a given portion of the first, are nothing at all." (Edmund Burk<::
"Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, originally presented to the Right Hon. W. Pitt,
in the month of November 1795," Edit. London, 1800, p. 10.)

1 In "The Times" of 26th November, 1862, a manufacturer, whose mill employ* d
800 hands, and consumed, on the average, 150 bales of East Indian, or 130 bales of
American cotton, complains, in doleful manner, of the standing expenses of bis
factory when not working. He estimates them at £6,000 a year. Among them a ~e
a number of items that do not concern us here, such as rent, rates, and taxes, ii-
surance, salaries of the manager, book-keeper, engineer, and others. Then he reck
ons £150 for coal used to heat the mill occasionally, and run the engine now ar d
then. Besides this, he includes the wages of the people employed at odd times :o
keep the machinery in working order. Lastly, he puts down £1,200 for depreciatic n
of machinery, because "the weather and the natural principle of decay do not sus
pend their operations because the steam-engine ceases to revolve." He says, eia-.
phatically, he does not estimate his depreciation at more than the small sum )f
£1,200, because his machinery is already nearly worn out.

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 231

their value.1 and it would therefore be inaccurate to say that
it is reproduced. It is rather preserved ; not by reason of any
operation it undergoes itself in the process; but because the
article in which it originally exists, vanishes, it is true, but
vanishes into some other article. Hence, in the value of the
product, there is a re-appearance of the value of the means of
production, but there is, strictly speaking, no reproduction of
that value. That which is produced is a new use-value in
which the old exchange-value re-appears.2

It is otherwise with the subjective factor of the labour-pro
cess, with labour-power in action. While the labourer, by
virtue of his labour being of a specialised kind that has a
special object, preserves and transfers to the product the value
of the means of production, he at the same time, by the mere
act of working, creates each instant an additional or new value.
Suppose the process of production to be stopped just when the
workman has produced an equivalent for the value of his own
labour-power, when, for example, by six hours' labour, he has
added a value of three shillings. This value is the surplus, of
the total value of the product, over the portion of its value
that is due to the means of production. It is the only original
bit of value formed during this process, the only portion of the
value of the product created by this process. Of course, we
do not forget that this new value only replaces the money
advanced by the capitalist in the purchase of the labour-power,

1 "Productive consumption . . . where the consumption of a commodity is a part
of the process of production. ... In these instances there is no consumption of
value." (S. P. Newman, 1. c. p. 296.)

1 In an American compendium that has gone through, perhaps, 20 editions, this
passage occurs: "It matters not in what form capital re-appears;" then after a
lengthy enumeration of all the possible ingredients of production whose value re
appears in the product, the passage concludes thus: "The various kinds of food,
clothing, and shelter, necessary for the existence and comfort of the human being,
are also changed. They are consumed from time to time, and their value re-appears
in that new vigour imparted to his body and mind, forming fresh capital, to be em
ployed again in the work of production." (F. Wayland, 1. c. pp. 31, 32.) Without
noticing any other oddities, it suffices to observe, that what re-appears in the fresh
vigour, is not the bread's price, but its blood-forming substances. What, on the
other hand, re-appears in the value of that vigour, is not the means of subsistence,
but their value. The same necessaries of life, at half the price, would form just as
much muscle and bone, just as much vigour, but not vigour of the same value. This
confusion of "value" and "vigour" coupled with our author's pharisaical indefinite-
ness, mark an attempt, futile for all that, to thrash out an explanation of surplus-
value from a mere re-appearance of pre-existing values.

232 Capitalist Production.

and spent by the labourer on the necessaries of life. With
regard to the money spent, the new value is merely a repro
duction ; but, nevertheless, it is an actual, and not, as in the
case of the value of the means of production, only an apparent,
reproduction. The substitution of one value for another, is
here effected by the creation of new value.

We know, however, from what has gone before, that the
labour-process may continue beyond the time necessary to re
produce and incorporate in the product a mere equivalent for
the value of the labour-power. Instead of the six hours that
are sufficient for the latter purpose, the process may continue
for twelve hours. The action of labour-power, therefore, not
only reproduces Jte own value, but produces value over and
above it. This surplus-value is the difference between the
value of the product and the value of the elements consumed
in the formation of that product, in other words, of the means
of production and_the Labour-power.

By our explanation of the different parts played by the vari
ous factors of the labour-process in the formation of the pro
duct's value, we have, in fact, disclosed the characters of the
different functions allotted to the different elements of capital
in the process of expanding its own value. The surplus of the
total value of the prqduct, over the sum of the values of its
constituent factors, is the surplus of the expanded capital over
the capital originally advanced. The means of production on
the one hand, labour-power on the other, are merely the differ-
ent modes of existence which the value of the original capital
assumed when from being money it was transformed into the
various factors of the labo_ur-process. That part of capital
then, which is represented by the means of production by the
raw material, auxiliary material and the instruments_pf labour,
does not, in the process of production, undergo any quajatitative
alteration of j^lue. I therefore call it the constant part of
capital, or, more shortly, constant capital.

On the other hand, that part of capital, represented by
labour-power, does, in the process of production, undergo an
alteration^of value. It both reproduces the equivalent of its
own value, and also produces an excess, a surplus-value, which

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 233

may itself vary, may be more or less according to circum
stances. This part, of capital is continually being transformed
from a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it
the variable part of capital, or, shortly, variable_capital. The
same elements of capital which, from the point of view of the
labour-process, present themselves respectively as the objective
and subjective factors, as means of production and labour-
power, present themselves, from the point of view of the pro
cess of creating surplus-value, as constant and variable capital.
The definition of constant capital given above by no means
excludes the possibility of a change of value in its elements.
Suppose the price of cotton to be one day sixpence a pound,
and the next day, in consequence of a failure of the cotton crop,
a shilling a pound. Each pound of the cotton bought at six
pence, and worked up after the rise in value, transfers to the
product a value of one shilling; and the cotton already spun
before the rise, and perhaps circulating in the markets as yarn,
likewise transfers to the product twice its original value. It
is plain, however, that these changes of value are independent
of the increment or surplus-value added to the value of the
cotton by the spinning itself. If the old cotton had never
been spun, it could, after the rise, be resold at a shilling a
pound instead of at sixpence. Further, the fewer the processes
the cotton has gone through, the more certain is this result.
We therefore find that speculators make it a rule when such
sudden changes in value occur to speculate in that material on
which the least possible quantity of labour has been spent: to
speculate, therefore, in yarn rather than in cloth, in cotton
itself, rather than in yarn. The change of value in the case we
have been considering, originates, not in the process in which
the cotton plays the part of a means of production, and in
which it therefore functions as constant capital, but in the pro
cess in which the cotton itself is produced. The value of a
commodity, it is true, is determined by the quantity of labour
contained in it, but this quantity is itself limited by social con
ditions. If the time socially necessary for the production of
any commodity alters — and a given weight of cotton represents,
after a bad harvest, more labour than after a good one — all

234 Capitalist Production.

previously existing commodities of the same class are affected,
because they are, as it were, only individuals of the species,1
and their value at any given time is measured by the labour
socially necessary, i.e., by the labour necessary for their pro
duction under the then existing social conditions.

As the value of the raw material may change, so, too, may
that of the instruments of labour, of the machinery, &c., em
ployed in the process; and consequently that portion of the
value of the product transferred to it from them, may also
change. If in consequence of a new invention, machinery of a
particular kind can be produced by a diminished expenditure
of labour, the old machinery becomes depreciated more or less
and consequently transfers so much less value to the product.
But here again, the change in value originates outside the
process in which the machine is acting as a means of pro
duction. Once engaged in this process, the machine cannot
transfer more value than it possesses apart from the process.

Just as a change in the value of the means of production,
even after they have commenced to take a part in the labour
process, does not alter their character as constant capital, so,
too, a change in the proportion of constant to variable capital
does not affect the respective functions of these two kinds of
capital. The technical conditions of the labour process may
be revolutionised to such an extent, that where formerly ten
men using ten implements of small value worked up a relative
ly small quantity of raw m£tfirial,~one man may now, with the
aid of one expensive machine, work up one hundred times as
much raw material. In the latter case we have an enormous
increase in the constant capital, that is represented by the
total value of the means of production used, and at the same
time a great reduction in the variable capital, invested in
labour-power. Such a revolution, however, alters only the
quantitave relation between the constant and the variable cap-
ital, or the proportions in which the total capital is split up
into its constant and variable constituents; it has not in the
least degree affected the essential difference between the two.

1 "Toutes les productions d'un meme genre ne ferment proprement qu'une masse,
dont Ic prix se determine en general et sans egard aux circonstances particuliires."
(Le Trosne, 1. c., p. 893.)

The Rate of Surplus-value. 235

CHAPTER IX.

THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE.
SECTION" 1. THE DEGREE OF EXPLOITATION OF LABOUR-POWER.

THE surplus-value generated in the process of production by
C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self-expansion
of the value of the capital C, presents itself for our consider
ation, in the first place, as a surplus, as the amount by which
the value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent
element

The capital C is made up of two components, one, the sum
of money _c laid out upon the means of production, and the
other, the sum of money v expended upon the labour-power;
c represents the portion that has become constant capital, and
v the portion that has become variable capital. At first then,
C=c+v: for example, if £500 is the capital advanced, its com
ponents may be such that the £500 =£410 const +£90 var.
When the process of production is finished, we get a com
modity whose value= (c+v)+s, where s is the surplus-value;
or taking our former figures, the value of th?s commodity may
be (£410 const. +£90 var.) +£90 surpl. Tho original capital
has now changed from C to C', from £500 to £590. The dif
ference is s or a surplus value of £90. Since the value of the
constituent elements of the product is equal to the value of
the advanced capital, it is mere tautology to say, that the ex
cess of the value of the product_over the value of its constitu
ent elements, is equal to the expansion of^the capital advanced
or to the surplus-value produced.

Nevertheless, we must examine this tautology a little more
closely. The two things compared are, the value of the pro
duct, and the value of its constituents consumed in the process
of production. Now we have seen how that portion of the
constant capital which consists of the instruments of labour,
transfers to the product only a fraction of its value, while the
remainder of that value continues to reside in those instru-

236 Capitalist Production.

ments. Since this remainder plays no part in the formation of
value, we may at present leave it on one side. To introduce it
into the calculation would make no difference. For instance,
taking our former example, c=£410 : suppose this sum to con
sist of £312 value of raw material, £44 value of auxiliary
material, and £54 value of the machinery worn away in the
process; and suppose that the total value of the machinery
employed is £1,054. Out of this latter sum, then, we reckon
as advanced for the purpose of turning out the product, the
sum of £54 alone, which the machinery loses hy wear and
tear in the process ; for this is all it parts with to the produce
Now if we also reckon the remaining £1,000, which still con
tinues in the machinery, as transferred to the product, we
ought also to reckon it as part of the value advanced, and thus
make it appear on hoth sides of our calculation.1 We shoulc,
in this way, get £1,500 on one side and £1,590 on the other.
The difference of these two sums, or the surplus-value, would
still be £90. Throughout this Book therefore, by constant
capital advanced for the production of value, we always mear,
unless the context is repugnant thereto, the value of the means
of production actually consumed in the procesa. and that valua
alone.

This being so, let us return to the formula C=c4-v. which
we saw transformed into C'=(c+v)+s, C becoming C'.
We know that the value of the constant capital is trans
ferred to, and merely re-appears in the product Th3
TIP.W value actually created in_J;he process, the value pro
duced, or value-product, is therefore not the same as the valu-3
of the product; it is not, as it would at first sight appear
(c+v)+s or £410 const +£90 var.+£90 surpl. ; but Z.-J-.L
or £90 var.+£90 surpl. not £590 but £180. If c=o, or in
other words, if there were branches of industry in which th<)
capitalist could dispense with all means of production madis
by previous labour, whether they be raw material, auxiliary
material, or instruments of labour, employing only labour-

1 "If we reckon the value of the fixed capital employed as a part of the advances,
we must reckon the remaining value of such capital at the end of the year as a par: •
of the annual returns." (Malthus, "Princ. of Pol. Econ." 2nd ed., Lond., 1836, p.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 237

power and materials supplied by Nature, in that case, there
would be no constant capital to transfer to the product. This
component of the value of the product, i.e., the £410 in our ex
ample, would be eliminated, but the sum of £180, the amount
of new value created, or the value produced, which contain*
£90 of surplus-value, would remain just as great as if c repre-
sented the highest value jmaginable. We should have C=
(0+v)=v or C' the expanded capital=v+s and therefore
(7 — C=s as before. On the other hand, if s=0, or in other
words, if the labour-power, whose value is advanced in the
form of variable capital, were to produce only its equivalent,
we should have C=c+v or C' the value of the product=
(c_j_v)_|_0 or €=(7. The capital advanced would, in this
case, not have expanded its value.

From what has gone before, we know that surplus-value is
purely the result of a variation in the value of v, of that portion
of the capital which is transformed into labour-power; con
sequently, v+s=v+v/ or v plus an increment of v. But the
fact that it is v alone that varies, and the conditions of that
variation, are obscured by the circumstance that in consequence
of the increase in the variable component of the capital, there
is also an increase in the sum total of the advanced capital. It
was originally £500 and becomes £590. Therefore in order
that our investigation may lead to accurate results, we must
make abstraction from that portion of the value of the pro
duct, in which constant capital alone appears, and consequently
must equate the constant capital to zero or make c=0. This
is merely an application of a mathematical rule, employed
whenever we operate with constant and variable magnitudes,
related to each other by the symbols of addition and sub
traction only.

A further difficulty is caused by the original form of the
variable capital. In our example, C'=£410 const. +£90 var
+£90 surpl. ; but £90 is a given and therefore a constant
quantity ; hen^e it appears absurd to treat it as variable. But
in fact, the term £90 var. is here merely a symbol to show that
this value undergoes a process. The portion of the capital in
vested in the purchase of labour-power is a definite quantity of

238 Capitalist Production.

materialised labour, a constant value like the value of the
labour-power purchased. But in the process of production the
place of the £90 is taken by the labour-power in action, dead
labour is replaced by living labour, something stagnant by
something flowing, a constant by a variable. The result is the
reproduction of v plus an increment of v. From the point of
view, then, of capitalist production, the whole process appears
as the spontaneous variation of the originally constant value,
which is transformed into labour-power. Both the process and
its result^ appear to be owing to this value. If, therefore, such
expressions as "£90 variable capital," or "so much self-
expanding value," appear contradictory, this is only because
they bring to the surface a contradiction immanent in cap
italist production.

At first sight it appears a strange proceeding, to equate the
constant capital to zero. Yet it is what we do every day. If,
for example, we wish to calculate the amount of England's
profits from the cotton industry, we first of all deduct the sums
paid for cotton to the United States, India, Egypt and other
countries ; in other words, the value of the capital that mere! y
re-aj3£ears in the value of thejprodnct is put=0.

Of course the ratio ol surplus-value not only to that portion
of the capital from which it immediately springs, and who^e
change of value it represents, but also to the f=mm 1;?tfl1 frf ^'Q
capital advanced is economically of^very great impojdaafieu
We shall, therefore, in the third book, treat of this ratio ex
haustively. In order to enable one portion of a capital to ex
pand its value by being converted into labour-power, it is
I necessary that another portion be converted into means of pro
duction. In order that variable capital may perform its fun 3-
tion, constant capital must be advanced in proper proportion,
a proportion given by the special technical conditions of each
labour-process. The circumstance, however, that retorts ard
other vessels, are necessary to a chemical process, does n->t
compel the chemist to notice them in the result of his analysis.
If we look at the means of production, in their relation to the
creation of value, and to the variation in the quantity of valua,
apart from anything else, they appear simply as the material

The Rate of Surplus-value. 239

in which labour-power, the value-creator, incorporates itself.
Neither the nature, nor the value of this material is of any
importance. The only requisite is that there be a sufficient
supply to absorb the labour expended in the process of pro
duction. That supply once given, the material may rise or
fall in value, or even be, as land and the sea, without any value
in itself ; but this will have no influence^^on the creation of value
or on the variation in the quantity of value.1

In the first place then we equate the constant ™j™ta1 fn 7prn
The capital advanced is consequently reduced from c-fv tojv,
and instead of the value of the product (c-f-v)-(-s we have now
the value produced (v+s). Given the new value produced^
£180, which sum consequently represents the whole labour ex
pended during the process, then subtracting from it £90 the
value of the variable capital, we have remaining £90, the
amount of the surplus-value. This sum of £90 or s expresses
the absolute quantity of surplus-value produced. The relative
quantity produced, or the increase per cent of the variable
capital, is determined, it is plain, by the ratio of the surplus-
value to the variable capital, or is expressed by J . In our
example this ratio isff , which gives an increase of 100%.
This relative increase^n the value of the variable capital, or
the relative .magnitude of the surplus-value, I call, "The rate
of^surplus-value." 2

We have seen that the labourer, during one portion of the
labour-process, produces only the value of his labour-power,
that is, the value of his means of subsistence. Now since his
work forms part of a system, based on the social division of
labour, he does not directly produce the actual necessaries
which he himself consumes; he produces instead a particular
commodity, yarn for example, whose value is equal to the
value of those necessaries or of the money with which they

*What Lucretius says is self-evident; "nit pa>8e creari de nihilo," out of nothing,
nothing can be created. Creation of valu* ia transformation of labour-power into
labour. Labour-power itself is energy transferred to a human organism by means of
nourishing matter.

* In the same way that the English use the terms "rate of profit," "rate of in
terest." We shall see, in Book III., that the wte of profit is no mystery, so soon
as we know the laws of surplus-value. If we reverse the process, we cannot com
prehend either the one or the other.

240 Capitalist Production.

can be bought. The portion of his day's labour devoted to
this purpose, will be greater orjess, in proportion to the value
of the necessaries that he daily requires on an average, or,
what amounts to the same thing, in proportion to the labour-
time required on an average to produce them. If the value
of those necessaries represents on an average the expenditure
of six hours' labour, the workman must on an average work
for six hours to produce that value. If instead of working for
the capitalist, he worked independently on his own account, he
would, other things being equal, still be obliged to labour for
the same number of hours, in order to produce the value of his
labour-power, and thereby to gain the means of subsistence
necessary for his conservation or continued reproduction. But
as we have seen, during that portion of his day's labour in
which he produces the value of his labour-power, say three
shillings, he produces only an equivalent for the value of his
labour-power already advanced by the capitalist; the new
value created only replaces the variable capital advanced. It
is owing to this fact, that the production of the new value of
three shillings takes the semblance of a mere reproduction.
That portion of the working day, then, during which this re
production takes place, I call "necessary" labour-time, and the
labour expended during that time I call "necessary" labour.1
fevTecessary, as regards the labourer, because independent of the
[particular social form of his labour; necessary, as regards
capital, and the world of capitalists, because on the continued
existence of the labourer depends their existence also.

During the second period of the labour-process, that in
which his labour is no longer necessary labour, the workman,
it is true, labours^ expends labour-power ; but his labour, being
no longer necessary labour, he creates no value for himself.
He creates surplus-value which, for the capitalist, has all the
charms of a creation out of nothing. This portion of the

1 In this work, we have, up to now, employe 1 the term "necessary labour-time,"
to designate the time i rcessary under given social conditions for the production of
any commodity. Henceforward we use it to designate also the time necessary for
the production of the p?" Icular commodity labour-power. The use of one and the
same technical terra in different senses is inconvenient, but in no science can it be
altogether avoided. Compare, for instance, the higher with the lower branches of
mathematics.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 241

working day, I name surplus labour-time, and to the labour
expended during that time, I give the name of surplus-labour.
It is every bit as important, for a correct understanding of
surplusjyjlue, to conceive it as a mere congelation of surplus-
labour-time, as nothing but nrmfprifllisgH syrplns-lflbour, as it
is, for a proper comprehension of value, to conceive it as a mere
congelation of^so^jnany hours of labour, as nothing but ma-
terialised labour. The essential difference between the various
economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society
based on slave labour, and one based on wage labour, lies only
in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case ex
tracted from the actual producer, the labourer.1

Since, on the one hand, the values of the variable capital
and of the labour-power purchased by that capital are equal,
and the value of this labour-power determines the necessary
portion of the working day ; and since, on the other hand, the
surplus-value is determined by the surplus portion of the
working day, it follows that surplus-value bears the same ratio
to variable capital, that surplus-labour does to necessary labour,
or in other words, the rate of surplus-value -7- = necessary tebor
Both ratios, -f and necls!ary^abor express the same thing in differ
ent ways; in the one case by reference to materialised, incor
porated labour, in the other by reference to living, fluent
labour.

The rate of surplus-value is therefore an exact expression j
for the degree ofj?xr>loitation of labour-power by capital or of I
the labourer by the capitalist.2

1 Herr Wilhelm Thucydides Roscher has found a mare's nest He haa made the
important discovery that if, on the one hand, the formation of surplus-value, or
surplus-produce, and the consequent accumulation of capital, is now-a-days due to
the thrift of the capitalist, on the other hand, in the lowest stages of civilisation it
is the strong who compel the weak to economise (1. c. p. 78). To economise what?
Labour? Or superfluous wealth that does not exist? What is it that makes such
men as Roscher account for the origin of surplus-value, by a mere rechauffe of the
more or less plausible excuses by the capitalist, for his appropriation of surplus-
value? It is, besides their real ignorance, their apologetic dread of a scientific
analysis of value and surplus-value, and of obtaining a result, possibly not alto
gether palatable to the powers that be.

* Although the rate of surplus-value is an exact expression for the degree of ex
ploitation of labour-power, it is, in no sense, an expression for the absolute amount
of exploitation. For example, if the necessary labour=5 hours and the surplus-la-
bour=5 hours, the degree of exploitation ia 100%. The amount of exploitation i»

242 Capitalist Production.

We assumed in our example, that the value of the product
=£410 const. +£90 var.-f£90 surpl., and that the capital
advanced =£500. Since the surplus-value =£90, and the ad
vanced capital— £500, we should, according to the usual way
of reckoning, get as the rate of surplus value (generally con
founded with rate of profits) 18%, a rate so low as possibly
to cause a pleasant surprise to Mr. Carey and other harmon-
isers. But in truth, the rate of surplus-value is not, equal
to £ or^but to -f : thus it is not &Qfl but f# or IQOfe. which
is more than fiveTlimes the apparent degree of exploitation.
Although, in the case we have supposed, we are ignorant cf
the actual length of the working day, and of the. duration in
days or weeks of the labour-process, as also of the number cf
labourers employed, yet the rate of surplus-value -7 accurately
discloses to us, by means of its equivalent expression,

the relation between the two parts of the working day. This
relation is here one of equality, the rate being 100%. Henco,
it is plain, the labourer, in our example, works one half of the
day for himself, the other half for the capitalist.

The method of calculating the rate of surpLifl-value is there
fore, shortly, as follows. We take the total value of the prc -
duct and put the constant Cjy^ital^hich merely re-appears^ in i :,
equal to zero. What remains, is the only value that has, in
the process of producing the commodity, been actually created.
If the amount of surplus-value be given, we have only to deduct
it from this remainder, to find the variable capital. And vice
versa, if the latter be given, and we require to find the surplus-
value. If both be given, we have only to perform the conclud
ing operation, viz., to calculate ~ , the ratio of the surplus-
value to the variable capital.

Though the method is so simple, yet it may not be amiss, by
means of a few examples, to exercise the reader in the applies -
tion of the novel principles underlying it.

First we will take the case of a spinning mill containing

here measured by 5 hours. If, on the other hand, the necessary labour=6 hours
and the surplus-labour— 6 hours, the degree of exploitation remains, as be for:,
100%, while the actual amount of exploitation has increased 20%, namely from foe
hours to six.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 243

10,000 mule spindles, spinning No. 32 yarn from American
cotton, and producing 1 Ib. of yarn weekly per spindle. We
assume the waste to be 6% : under these circumstances 10,600
Ibs. of cotton are consumed weekly, of which 600 Ibs. go to
waste. The price of the cotton in April, 1871, was 7f d. per
Ib. ; the raw material therefore costs in round numbers £342.
The 10,000 spindles, including preparation-machinery, and
motive power, cost, we will assume, £1 per spindle, amounting
to a total of £10,000. The wear and tear we put at 10%, or
£1000 yearly=£20 weekly. The rent of the building we
suppose to be £300 a year or £6 a week. Coal consumed (for
100 horse-power indicated, at 4 Ibs. of coal per horse-power per
hour during 60 hours, and inclusive of that consumed in heat
ing the mill), 11 tons a week at 8s. 6d. a ton, amounts to
about £4rJ a week : gas, £1 a week, oil, &c., £4^ a week. Total
cost of the above auxiliary materials, £10 weekly. Therefore
the constant portion of the value of the week's product is £378.
Wages amount to £52 a week. The price of the yarn is 12^d.
per Ib., which gives for the value of 10,000 Ibs. the sum of
££10. The surplus value is therefore in this case £510 —
£430=£80. We put the constant part of the value of the
product =Q± as it plays no part in the creaJioojaf-SLaliie. There
remains £132 as the weekly value created, which— £52 v#r.+
£80 surpl. The rate of surplus-value is therefore f~f =
153fJ-%. In a working day of 10 hours with average Tafeour
the result is: necessary labour =3f^-hours and surplus-labour

—« 2 i

One more example. Jacob gives the following calcx. tion
for the year 1815. Owing to the previous adjustment of sev
eral items it is very imperfect ; nevertheless for our purpose it
is sufficient. In it he assumes the price of wheat to be 8s. a
quarter, and the average yield per acre to be 22 bushels.

1 The above data, which may be relied upon, were given me by a Manchester spin*
ner. In England the horse-power of an engine was formerly calculated from th«
diameter of iti cylinder, now the actual horse-oower shown by the indicator ia taken.

244 Capitalist Production.

VALUE PRODUCED PER ACRE,

Seed, £1 9 0

Manure, 2 10 0

Wages, 3 10 0

Total, .. £7 9 0

Tithes, Rates, and

Taxes, £1 1 0

Rent 1 8 0

Farmer's Profit and

Interest, 1 2 0

Total, .. £3 11 0

Assuming that the price of the product is the same as its
value, we here find the surplus-value distributed under the
various heads of profit, interest, rent, &c. We have nothing
to do with these in detail; we simply add them together, and
the sum is a surplus-valve of £3 11s. Od. The sum of £3
19s. Od., paid for seed and manure, is constant capital, and we
put it equal to zero. There is left the sum of £3 10s. Od.,
which is the variable capital advan^d: and we see that a new
value of £3 10s. Od.+£3 11s. Od, has been produced in its
place. Therefore -f = -ff-j£~~ , giving a rate of surplus-
value of more than 100%. The labourer employs more than
one half of his working day in producing the surplus-value,
which different persons, under different pretexts, share
amongst themselves.1

^ * 2. - THE REPRESENTATION OF THE COMPONENTS OF
• rIE VALUE OF THE PRODUCT BY CORRESPONDING PRO
PORTIONAL PARTS OF THE PRODUCT

Let us now return to the example by which w« were shown
how the capitalist converts money into capital.

The product of a working day of 12 hours it1 20 ibs. of
yarn, having a value of 30s. ^o less thany^ths of this value,
or 24s., is due to mere re-appearance in it, of the value of the

* The calculations given in the text are intended merely as illustrations. We hrv»
in fact assumed that price%=values. We shall, however, see, in volume 117., that
even in the case of average prices th« assumption cannot be made in this very jiui
pie manner.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 245

means of production (20 Ibs. of cotton, value 20s., and spindle
worn away, 4s.) : it is therefore constant capital. The re
maining -fa ths or 6s- is the new value created during the spin
ning process : of this one half replaces the value of the day's
labour-power, or the variable capital, the remaining half con
stitutes a surplus-value of 3s. The total value then of the 20
Ibs. of yarn is made up as follows :

80s. value of yarn=24 const. + 3s. var.+3s. surpl.

Since the whole of the value is contained in tho 20 Ibs. of
yarn produced, it follows that the various component parts of
this value, can be represented as being contained respectively
in corresponding parts of the product.

If the value of 30s. is contained in 20 Ibs. of yarn, then
T^ths of this value, or the 24s. that form its constant part, is
contained in -j^-ths of the product or in 16 Ibs. of yarn. Of
the latter 13 £ Ibs. represent the value of the raw material, the
20s. worth of cotton spun, and 2§ Ibs. represent the 4s. worth
of spindle, &c., worn away in the process.

Hence the whole of the cotton used up in spinning the 20
Ibs. of yarn, is represented by 13 J Ibs. of yarn. This latter
weight of yarn contains, it is true, by weight, no more than 13 J
Ibs. of cotton, worth 13J shillings; but the 6f shillings ad
ditional value contained in it, are the equivalent for the cotton
consumed in spinning the remaining 6§ Ibs. of yarn. The
effect is the same as if these 6f Ibs. of yarn contained no cot
ton at all, and the whole 20 Ibs. of cotton were concentrated in
the 13 J Ibs. of yarn. The latter weight, on the other hand,
does not contain an atom either of the value of the auxiliary
materials and implements, or of the value newly created in the
process.

In the same way, the 2§ Ibs. of yarn, in which the 4s., the
remainder of the constant capital, is embodied, represents
nothing but the value of the auxiliary materials and instru
ments of labour consumed in producing the 20 Ibs. of yarn.

We have, therefore, arrived at this result: although eight-
tenths of the product, or 16 Ibs. of yarn, is, in its character of
an article of utility, just as much the fabric of the spinner's
labour, as the remainder of the same product, yet when viewed

246 Capitalist Production.

in this connexion, it does not contain, and has not absorbed any
labour expended during the process of spinning. It is just as
if the cotton had converted itself into yarn, without help; as
if the shape it had assumed was mere trickery and deceit:
for so soon as our capitalist sells it for 24s., and with the money
replaces his means of production, it becomes evident that this
.1 6 Ibs. of yarn is nothing more than so much cotton and spindle-
waste in disguise.

On the other hand, the remaining ^j-ths of the product, or 4
Ibs. of yarn, represent nothing but the new value of 6s., created
during the 12 hours' spinning process. All the value trans
ferred to those 4 Ibs., from the raw material and instruments
of labour consumed, was, so to say, intercepted in order to bo
incorporated in the 16 Ibs. first spun. In this case, it is as if
the spinner had spun 4 Ibs. of yarn out of air, or, as if he had
spun them with the aid of cotton and spindles, that, being the
spontaneous gift of Nature, transferred no value to the product.

Of this 4 Ibs. of yarn, in which the whole of the value newly
created during the process, is condensed, one half represents
the equivalent for the value of the labour consumed, or the 3s.
variable capital, the other half represents the 3s. surplus-value.

Since 12 working hours of the spinner are embodied in 6s.,
it follows that in yarn of the value of 30s., there must be em
bodied 60 working hours. And this quantity of labour-time
does in fact exist in the 20 Ibs. of yarn ; for in nj-ths or 16 Ibs.
there are materialised the 48 hours of labour expended, before
the commencement of the spinning process, on the means of
production ; and in the remaining -n$-ths or 4 Ibs. there are
materialised the 12 hours' work done during the process itself.

On a former page we saw that the value of the yarn is equal
to the sum of the new value created during the production of
that yarn plus the value previously existing in the means of
production.

It has now been shown how the various component parts of
the value of the product, parts that differ functionally from
each other, may be represented by corresponding proportional
parts of the product itself.

To split up in this manner the product into different parts,

The Rate of Surplus-value. 247

of which one represents only the labour previously spent on
the means of production, or the constant capital, another, only
the necessary labour spent during the process of production, or
the variable capital, and another and last part, only the surplus-
labour expended during the same process, or the surplus-value ;
to do this, is, as will be seen later on from its application to
complicated and hitherto unsolved problems, no less important
than it is simple.

In the preceding investigation we have treated the total
product as the final result, ready for use, of a working day of
12 hours. We can however follow this total product through
all the stages of its production; and in this way we shall
arrive at the same result as before, if we represent the partial
products, given off at the different stages, as functionally
different parts of the final or total product.

The spinner produces in 12 hours 20 Ibs. of yarn, or in 1
hour 1 J Ibs. ; consequently he produces in 8 hours 13£ Ibs., or
a partial product equal in value to all the cotton that is spun
in a whole day. In like manner the partial product of the
next period of 1 hour and 36 minutes, is 2| Ibs. of yarn: this
represents the value of the instruments of labour that are con
sumed in 12 hours. In the following hour and 12 minutes,
the spinner produces 2 Ibs. of yarn worth 3 shillings, a value
equal to the whole value he creates in his 6 hours necessary
labour. Finally, in the last hour and 12 minutes he produces
another 2 Ibs. of yarn, whose value is equal to the surplus-
value, created by his surplus-labour during half a day. This
method of calculation serves the English manufacturer for
everyday use ; it shows, he will say, that in the first 8 hours,
or J of the working day, he gets back the value of his cotton ;
and so on for the remaining hours. It is also a perfectly
correct method: being in fact the first method given above
with this difference, that instead of being applied to space, in
which the different parts of the completed product lie side by
side, it deals with time, in which those parts are successively
produced. But it can also be accompanied by very barbarian
notions, more especially in the heads of those who are as much
interested, practically, in the process of making value beget

248 Capitalist Production.

value, as they are in misunderstanding that process theoreti
cally. Such people may get the notion into their heads, that
one spinner, for example, produces or replaces in the first 8
hours of his working day the value of the cotton ; in the
following hour and 36 minutes the value of the instruments of
labour worn away ; in the next hour and 12 minutes the value
of the wages ; and that he devotes to the production of surplus-
value for the manufacturer, only that well known "last hour,"
In this way the poor spinner is made to perform the two-fold
miracle not only of producing cotton, spindles, steam-engine,
fcoal, oil, &c., at the same time that he spins with them, but
also of turning one working day into five ; for in, .the example
we are considering, the production of the raw material and in
struments of labour demands four working days of twehe
hours each, and their conversion into yarn requires another
such day. That the love of lucre induces an easy belief in
such miracles, and that sycophant doctrinaires are never
wanting to prove them, is vouched for by the following inci
dent of historical celebrity.

SECTION 3. — SENIOR'S "LAST HOUR."

One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior, who
may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well knowi ,
alike for his economical "science," and for his beautiful style,
was summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the
latter place the political economy that he taught in the former.
The manufacturers elected him as their champion, not only
against the newly passed Factory Act, but against the sti.l
more menacing Ten-hours' agitation. With their usual prac
tical acuteness, they had found out that the learned Professor
"wanted a good deal of finishing;" it was this discovery that
caused them to write for him. On his side the Professor has
embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manu
facturers, in a pamphlet, entitled: "Letters on the Factorp
Act, as it affects the cotton manufacture." London, 1831.
Here we find, amongst others, the following edifying passage :
"Under the present law, no mill in which persons under 13
years of age are employed, can be worked

The Rate of Surplus-value. 249

more than 11 J hours a day, that is 12 hours for 5 days in the
week, and nine on Saturday.

"Now the following analysis ( !) will show that in a mill so
worked, the whole net profit is derived from the last hour. I
will suppose a manufacturer to invest £100,000 : — £80,000 in
his mill and machinery, and £20,000 in raw material and
wages. The annual return of that mill, supposing the capital
to be turned once a year, and gross profits to be 15 per cent.,

ought to be goods worth £115,000 Of this

£115,000, each of the twenty-three half-hours of work pro
duces 5-115ths or one twenty-third. Of these 23-23rds (con
stituting the whole £115,000) twenty, that is to say £100,000
out of the £115,000, simply replace the capital; — one twenty-
third (or £5000 out of the £115,000) makes up for the de
terioration of the mill and machinery. The remaining
2-23rds, that is, the last two of the twenty-three half-hours of
every day, produce the net profit of 10 per cent. If, there
fore (prices remaining the same), the factory could be kept at
work thirteen hours instead of eleven and a half, with an
addition of about £2600 to the circulating capital, the net
profit would be more than doubled. On the other hand, if the
hours of working were reduced by one hour per day (prices
remaining the same), the net profit would be destroyed — if
they were reduced by one hour and a half, even the gross profit
would be destroyed."1

1 Senior, 1. c., p. 12, 18. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are of no im
portance for our purpose; for instance, the assertion, that manufacturers reckon as
part of their profit, gross or net, the amount required to make good wear and tear of
machinery, or in other words, to replace a part of the capital. So, too, we pass over
any question as to the accuracy of his figures. Leonard Homer has shown in "A
Letter to Mr. Senior," &c., London, 1837, that they are worth no more than the so-
called "Analysis." Leonard Horner was one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners
in 1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor of Factories till 1859. He rendered undy
ing service to the English working class. He carried on a life-long contest, not
only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the Cabinet, to whom the
number of votes given by the masters in the Lower House, was a matter of far
greater importance than the number of hours worked by the "hands" in the mills.

Apart from errors in principle, Senior's statement is confused. What he really
intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman for 11^ hours
or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the working year, may be
conceived to consist of 11 y3 hours or 23 half-hours, but each multiplied by the
number of working days in the year. On this supposition, the 23 half-hours yield
a«a annual product of £115,000; one half-hour yields,^ X £115,000; 20 half-hours
yield | X £115,000; "-£100,000, i.t., they replace no more than the capital ad-

250 Capitalist Production.

And the professor calls this an "analysis!" If, giving
credence to the out-cries of the manufacturers, he believed that
the workmen spend the best part of the day in the production,
i. e., the reproduction or replacement of the value of the build
ings, machinery, cotton, coal, &c., then his analysis was super
fluous. His answer would simply have been : — Gentlemen !
if you work your mills for 10 hours instead of 11 J, then, other
things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton, machinery,
&c., will decrease in proportion. You gain just as much as
you lose. Your work-people will in future spend one hour
and a half less time in producing or replacing the capital
that has been advanced. — If, on the other hand, he did net
believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert
in such matters, deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought,
in a question that is concerned exclusively with the relations
of net profit to the length of the working day, before all things
to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful not to lump
together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but
to be good enough to place the constant capital, invested in
buildings, machinery, raw material, &c., on one :ide of th<3
account, and the capital advanced in wages on the other side.
If the professor then found, that in accordance with the calcu
lation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or re
placed his wages in 2 half -hours, in that case, he should hav<3
continued his analysis thus:

According to your figures, the workman in the last hour bu:
one produces his wages, and in the last hour your surplus-
value or net profit. Now, since in equal periods he producer
equal values, the produce of the last hour but one, must have
the same value as that of the last hour. Further, it is only
while he labours that he produces any value at all, and the
amount of his labour is measured by his labour-time. Thin
you say, amounts to \\\ hours a day. He employs one portion
of these 11^ hours, in producing or replacing his wages, and

vanced. There remain 8 half-hours, which yield ^ X £115,000= £15,000 or th«;
gross profit. Of these 3 half-hours, one yields ^X £115,000= £6000; 4. €., 1C
makes up for the wear and tear of the machinery; the remaining 2 half-hours, i.c.
tne last hour, yield X X £115,000= £10,000 or the net profit. In the text Senio
converts the last of the product into portions of the working day itself.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 251

the remaining portion in producing your not profit. Beyond
this he does absolutely nothing. But since, on your assump
tion, his wages, and the surplus-value he yields, are of equal
value, it is clear that he produces his wages in 5J hours, and
your net profit in the other 5f hours. Again, since the value
of the yarn produced in 2 hours, is equal to the sum of the
values of his wages and of your net profit, the measure of the
value of this yarn must be 11^ working hours, of which 5|
hours measure the value of the yarn produced in the last hour
but one, and 5f, the value of the yarn produced in the last
hour. We now come to a ticklish point ; therefore, attention !
The last working hour but one is, like the first, an ordinary
working hour, neither more nor less. How then can the
spinner produce in one hour, in the shape of yarn, a value that
embodies 5f hours labour \ The truth is that he performs no
such miracle. The use-value produced by him in one hour, is
a definite quantity of yarn. The value of this yarn is meas
ured by 5f working hours, of which 4f were, without any
assistance from him, previously embodied in the means of
production, in the cotton, the machinery, and so on; the re
maining one hour is added by him. Therefore since his wages
are produced in 5f hours, and the yarn produced in one hour
also contains 5J hours' work, there is no witchcraft in the re
sult, that the value created by his 5f hours' spinning, is equal
to the value of the product spun in one hour. You are alto
gether on the wrong track, if you think that he loses a single
moment of his working day, in reproducing or replacing the
values of the cotton, the machinery, and so on. On the con
trary, it is because his labour converts the cotton and spindles
into yarn, because he spins, that the values of the cotton and
spindles go over to the yarn of their own accord. This result
is owing to the quality of his labour, not to its quantity. It is
true, he will in one hour tranfer to the yarn more value, in the
shape of cotton, than he will in half an hour ; but that is only
because in one hour he spins up more cotton than in half an
hour. You see then, your assertion, that the workman pro
duces, in the last hour but one, the value of his wages, and in
the last hour your net profit, amounts to no more than this,

252 Capitalist Production.

that in the yarn produced by him in 2 working hours, whether
they are the 2 first or the 2 last hours of the working day, in
that yarn, there are incorporated 11£ working hours, or just a
whole day's work, i. e.t two hours of his own work and 9£ hours
of other people's. And my assertion that, in the first 5f hours,
he produces his wages, and in the last 5 J hours your net profit,
amounts only to this, that you pay him for the former, but not
for the latter. In speaking of payment of labour, instead of
payment of labour-power, I only talk your own slang. Now,
gentlemen, if you compare the working time you pay for, with
that which you do not pay for, you will find that they are to
one another, as half a day is to half a day ; this gives a rate of
100%, and a very pretty percentage it is. Further, there is
not the least doubt, that if you make your "hands" toil for 13
hours instead of 11£, and, as may be expected from you, treat
the work done in that extra one hour and a half, as pure
surplus-labour, then the latter will be increased from 5f hours'
labour to 7J hours' labour, and the rate of surplus-value from
100%, to 126-^%. So that you are altogether too sanguine,
in expecting that by such an addition of 1^ hours to the work
ing day, the rate will rise from 100% to 200% and more, in
other words that it will be "more than doubled." On the other
hand — man's heart is a wonderful thing, especially when car
ried in the purse — you take too pessimistic a view, when you
fear, that with a reduction of the hours of labour from 11 J to
10, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at
all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus-
labour will fall from 5J hours to 4j hours, a period that still
gives a very profitable rate of surplus-value, namely 82^-%.
But this dreadful "last hour," about which you have invented
more stories than have the millenarians about the day of
judgment, is "all bosh." If it goes, it will cost neither you,
your net profit, nor the boys and girls whom you employ, their
"purity of mind."1 Whenever yvur "last hour" strikes in

1 If, on the one hand, Senior proved that the net profit of the manufacturer,
the existence of the English cotton industry, and England's command of the markets
of the world, depend on "the last working hour," on thr other hand, Dr. Andrew
Ure showed, that if children and young persons under 18 years of age, instead of be*
ing kept the full 12 hours in the warm and pure moral atmosphere of the factory,

The Rate of Surplus-value. 253

earnest, think on the Oxford Professor. And now, gentleman,
"farewell, and raay we meet again in yonder better world, but
not before."

Senior invented the battle cry of the "last hour" in 1836. *

are turned out an hour sooner into the heartless and frivolous outer world", they will
be deprived, by idleness and vice, of all hope of salvation for their souls. Sine*
1848, the factory inspectors have never tired of twitting the masters with this "last,''
this "fatal hour." Thus Mr. Howell in his report of the 31st May, 1855: "Had
the following ingenious calculation (he quotes Senior) been correct, every cotton
factory in the United Kingdom would have been working at a loss since the year
1850." (Reports of the Insp. of Fact, for the half-year, ending 30th April, 1855,
pp. 19, 20.) In the year 1848, after the passing of the 10 hour's bill, the masters
of some flax spinning mills, scattered, few and far between, over the country on the
borders of Dorset and Somerset, foisted a petition against the bill on to the shoul
ders of a few of their work people. One of the clauses of this petition is as fol
lows: "Your petitioners, as parents, conceive that an additional hour of leisure will
tend more to demoralise the children than otherwise, believing that idleness is the
parent of vice." On this the factory report of 81st Oct., 1848, says: The atmos
phere of the flax mills, in which the children of these virtuous and tender parents
work, is so loaded with dust and fibre from the raw material, that it is exception
ally unpleasant to stand even 10 minutes in the spinning rooms: for you are unable
to do so without the most painful sensation, owing to the eyes, the ears, the nostrils,
and mouth, being immediately filled by the clouds of flax dust from which there is
no escape. The labour itself, owing to the feverish haste of the machinery, demands
unceasing application of skill and movement, under the control of a watchfulness
that never tires, and it seems somewhat hard, to let parents apply the term "idling"
to their own children, who, after allowing for meal times, are fettered for 10 whole
hours to such an occupation, in such an atmosphere. . . . These children work

longer than the labourers in the neighbouring villages Such cruel

talk about "idleness and vice" ought to be branded as the purest cant, and the most

shameless hypocrisy That portion of the public, who, about 12

years ago, were struck by the assurance with which, under the sanction of high
authority, it was publicly and most earnestly proclaimed, that the whole net profit
of the manufacturer flows from the labour of the last hour, and that, therefore,
the reduction of the working day by one hour, would destroy his net profit; that
portion of the public, we say, will hardly believe its own eyes, when it now finds,
that the original discovery of the virtues of "the last hour" has since been so far
improved, as to include morals as well as profit; so that, if the duration of th«
labour of children, is reduced to a full 10 hours, their morals, together with the net
profits of their employers, will vanish, both being dependent on this last, this fatal
hour. (See Repts., Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct., 1848, p. 101.) The same report
then gives some examples of the morality and virtue of these same pure-minded
manufacturers, of the tricks, the artifices, the cajoling, the threats, and the falsifica
tions, they made use of, in order, first, to compel a few defenceless workmen to sign
petitions of such a kind, and then to impose them upon Parliament as the petitions
of a who!e branch of industry, or a whole country. It is highly characteristic of the
present status of so called economical science, that neither Senior himself, who, at
a later period, to his honour be it said, energetically supported the factory legisla
tion, nor his opponents, from first to last, have ever been able to explain the false
conclusions of the "original discovery." They appeal to actual experience, but the
why and wherefore remains a mystery.

1 Nevertheless, the learned professor was not without some benefit from hi« jour
ney to Manchester. In the "Letters on the Factory Act," be makes the whole net
gains including "profit" and "interest," and even "something more," depend upon

254 Capitalist Production.

In the London Economist of the 15th April, 1848, the same cry
was again raised by James Wilson, an economical mandarin of
high standing : this time in opposition to the 10 hours' bill.

SECTION 4. STTBPLUS PRODUCE.

The portion of the product that represents the surplus-value,
(one-tenth of the 20 Ibs., or 2 Ibs. of yarn, in the example given
in Sec. 2,) we call "surplus-produce." Just as the rate of
surplus-value is determined by its relation, not to the sum total
of the capital, but to its variable part; in like manner, the re
lative quantity of surplus-produce is determined by the ratio
that this produce bears, not to the remaining part of the total
product, but to that part of it in which is incorporated the
necessary labour. Since the production of surplus-value is the
chief end and aim of capitalist production, it is clear, that the
greatness of a man's or a nation's wealth should be measured,
not by the absolute quantity produced, but bv the relative
magnitude of the surplus-produce.1

The sum of the necessary labour and the surplus-labour, i.e.,
of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the

a single unpaid hour's work of the labourer. One year previously, in his "Outlines
of Political Economy," written for the instruction of Oxford students and cultivated
Philistines, he had also "discovered, in opposition to Ricardo's determination of
value by labour, that profit is derived from the labour of the capitalist, and interest
from his asceticism, in other words, from his "abstinence." The dodge was an old
one, but the word "abstinence" was new. Herr Roscher translates it rightly by
"Enthaltung." Some of his countrymen, the Browns, Jones, and Robinsons, of
Germany, not so well versed in Latin as he, have, monk-like, rendered it by
"Entsagung" (renunciation).

1 "To an individual with a capital of £20,000, whose profits were £2.000 per an
num, it would be a mattter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a
100 or 1,000 men, whether the commodity produced sold for £10,000 or £20,000,
provided, in all cases, his profit were not diminished below £2,000. Is not the
real interest of the nation similar? Provided its net real income, its rent and
profits, be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation consists of 10 or of
12 millions of inhabitants." (Ric. 1. c., p. 416.) Long before Ricardo, Arthur
Young, a fanatical upholder of surplus produce, for the rest, a rambling uncritical
writer, whose reputation is in the inverse ratio of his merit, says, "Of what use, in
a modern kingdom, would be a whole province thus divided, [in the old Roman man
ner, by small independent peasants], however well cultivated, except for the mere
purpose of breeding men, which taken singly is a most useless purpose?" (Arthur
Young: Political Arithmetic, &c, London, 1774, p. 47.)

Very curious is "the strong inclination ... to represent net wealth as bene
ficial to the labouring class .... though it is evidently not on account of
being net." (Th. Hopkins, On Rent of Land, &c. London, 1828, p. 126.)

The Working Day. 255

value of his labour-power, and produces the surplus-value, this
sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i.e., the
working day.

CHAPTEK X.

THE WORKING DAY.
SECTION 1 - THE LIMITS OF THE WORKING DAY.

Wz started with the supposition that labour-power is bought
and sold at its value. Its value, like that of all other commo
dities, is determined by the working time necessary to its
production. If the production of the average daily means of
subsistence of the labourer takes up 6 hours, he must work, on
the average, 6 hours every day, to produce his daily labour-
power, or to reproduce the value received as the result of its
sale. The necessary part of his working day amounts to 6
hours, and is, therefore, cceteris paribus, a given quantity.
But with this, the extent of the working day itself is not yet
given.

Let us assume that the line A B represents the length of the
necessary working time, say 6 hours. If the labour be pro
longed 1, 3, or 6 hours beyond A B, we have 3 other lines:
Working day I. Working day II. Working day III.

A - B— C. A - B - C. A - B - C.
representing 3 different working days of 7, 9, and 12 hours.
The extension B C of the line A B represents the length of
the surplus labour. As the working day is A B -)- B C or
A C, it varies with the variable quantity B C. Since A B
is constant, the ratio of B C to A B can always be calculated.
In working day I. it is J, in working day II, f in working day
III, | of A B. Since, further the ratio

termines the rate of the surplus-value, the latter is given, by
the ratio of B C to A B. It amounts in the 3 different working
days respectively to 16§, 50 and 100 per cent. On the other
hand, the rate of surplus-value alone would not give us the

256 Capitalist Production.

extent of the working day. If this rate e.g., were 100 per
cent, the working day might be of 8, 10, 12, or more hours.
It would indicate that the 2 constituent parts of the working
day, necessary-labour and surplus-labour time, were equal in
extent, but not how long each of these two constituent parts
was.

The working day is thus not a constant, but a variable
quantity. One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the
working time required for the reproduction of the labour-
power of the labourer himself. But its total amount varies
with the duration of the surplus-labour. The working day if,
therefore, determinable, but is, per se, indeterminate.1

Although the working day is not a fixed, but a fluent
quantity, it can, on the other hand, only vary within certain
limits. The minimum limit is, however, not determinable ;
of course, if we make the extension line BC or the surplus -
labour— 0, we have a minimum limit, i.e., the part of the day
which the labourer must necessarily work for his own main
tenance. • On the basis of capitalist production, however, this
necessary labour can form a part only of the working day ; th3
working day itself can never be reduced to this minimum. On
the other hand, the working day has a maximum limit. It
d cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. This maximum
limit is conditioned by two things. First, by the physical
bounds of labour-power. Within the 24 hours of the natural
day a man can expend only a definite quantity of his vital force,
A horse, in like manner, can only work from day to day, 8
hours. During part of the day this force must rest, sleep ;
during another part the man has to satisfy other physical needs,
to feed, wash, and clothe himself. Besides these purely physi
cal limitations, the extension of the working day encounters
moral ones. The labourer needs time for satisfying his intel
lectual and social wants, the extent and number of which aro
conditioned by the general state of social advancement. Thn
variation of the working day fluctuates, therefore, within
physical and social bounds. But both these limiting condi-

1 "A day's labour is vague, it may be long or short" ("An Essay on Trade ant
Commerce, containing observations on taxes," &c. London, 1770. p. 73.)

The Working Day. 257

lions are of a very elastic nature, and allow the greatest lati
tude. So we find working days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours,
i.e., of the most different lengths.

The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate.
To him its use-value belongs during one working day. He
has thus acquired the right to make the labour work for him
during one day. But what is a working day ? l

At all even! 3, less than a natural day. By how much ?
The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule, the
necessary limit of the working day. As capitalist, he is only
capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But
capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create
value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means
of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-
labour.2

Capital is dead labour, that vampire-like, only lives by
sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it
sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time
during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has
purchased of him.8

If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he
robs the capitalist.4

The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the ex
change of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get
the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commo
dity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been

1 This question is far more important than the celebrated question of Sir Robert
Peel to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce: What is a pound? A question
that could only have been proposed, because Peel was as much in the dark as to the
nature of money as the "little shilling men" of Birmingham.

•It is the aim of the capitalist to obtain with his expended capital the greatest
possible quantity of labour (d'obetnir du capital depense la plus forte somme de
travail possible). J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil . . Traite theorique et pratique" de* cntre-
prises industrielles. 2nd ed. Paris, 1857, p. 63.

* "An hour's labour lost in a day is a prodigious injury to a commercial State.
. . . There is a very great consumption of luxuries among the labouring poor of
this kingdom: particularly among the manufacturing populace, by which they also
consume their time, the most fatal of consumptions." An Essay on Trade and
Commerce, &c., p. 47 and 163.

* "Si le manouvrier libre prend un Instant de repos, I'eVonomie sordide qui le suit
del yeujc avec inquietude pretend qu'il la vole," N. Lingue*. "The"ori* des loix
civiles, Ac. London, 1767," t II., P- 46«.

258 Capitalist Production.

stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production,
rises :

The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the
crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and
a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it.
That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of
capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You
and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange
of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity
belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer,
who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my
daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay
/ for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and t3
sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c ,
I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal
amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preaca
to me constantly the gospel of "saving" and "abstinence. '
Good ! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole
wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of h.
I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as
much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, ani
healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the
working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-
power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain ia
labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour- power ani
the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average
time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average
labourer can live, is 30 years, the value of my labour-power,
which you pay me from day to day is B651XBO or j 0 1 5 p- of its
total value. But if you consume it in ten years, you pay ma
daily 3-7^3-5- instead of FfrVff of its total value, i.e., only ^ of its
daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of f of the
value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labour-
power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our
contract and the law of exchanges, I demand, therefor, a
working day of normal length, and I demand it without any
appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out
of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a

The Working Day. 259

of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and
in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you rep
resent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That
which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I de
mand the normal working day because I, like every other
seller, demand the value of my commodity.1

We see then, that> apart from extremely elastic bounds, the
nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit
to the working day, no limit to surplus-labour. {/The capitalist
maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the
working day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possi
ble, two working days out of one. On the other hand, the
peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its
consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his
right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to one
of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an anti
nomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the
law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides.
Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the de
termination of what is a working day, presents itself as the re
sult of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the
class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working class.

•f

SECTION 2. THE GREED FOB SURPLUS LABOR, MANUFAC
TURER AND BO YARD.

Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part
of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production,
the labourer free or not free, must add to the working time
necessary for his own maintenance an extra working time in
order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the
means of production,2 whether this proprietor be the Athenian

1 During the great strike of the London builders, 1860-61, for the reduction of
the working day to 9 hours, their Committee published a manifesto that contained, to
some extent, the plea of our workers. The manifesto allude*, not without irony, to
the fact, that the greatest profit^monger amongst the building masters, a certain
Sir M. Peto, was in the odour of sanctity. (This same Peto, after 1867, came to aa
end a la Strousberg.)

* "Those who labour .... in reality feed both the pensioner* . . »
[called the rich] and themselves." (Edmund Burke, 1. c., p. 2.)

260 Capitalist Production.

KaAfo K<lya0os, Etruscan tlieocrat, civis Bomanus, Norman
baron, American slave owner, Wallachian Bojard, modern
landlord or capitalist.1 It is, however, clear that in any
given economic formation of society, where not the exchange
value but the use-value of the product predominates, surplus-
labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be
greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus-
labour arises from the nature of the production itself. Henc»
in antiquity overwork becomes horrible only when the object is
to obtain exchange value in its specific independent money-
form ; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory work
ing to death is here the recognized form of over- work. Only
read Diodorus Siculus.2 Still these are exceptions in antiq
uity. But as soon as people, whose production still moves
within the lower forms of slave-labour, corvee-labour, &c.,
are drawn into the whirlpool of an international mar
ket dominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the
sale of their products for export becoming their principal
interest, the civilized horrors of over-work are grafted
on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &c. Hence the
negro labour in the Southern States of the American
Union preserved something of a patriarchal character, so lorg
as production was chiefly directed to immediate local consum >
tion. But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of
vital interest to these states, the over-working of the negro ar d
sometimes the using up of his life in 7 years' of labour became
a factor in a calculated and calculating system. 1 It was no
longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of
, useful products. It was now a question of production of sur
plus-labour itself. So was it also with the corvee, e.g., in the
Danubian Principalities (now Roumania).

1 Niebuhr in his "Roman History" says very naively: "It is evident that woiks
like the Etruscan, -which, in their ruins astound us, presuppose in little (!) sta es
lords and vassals." Sismondi says far more to the purpose that "Brussels late"
presupposes wage-lords and wage-slaves.

* "One cannot see these unfortunates (in the gold mines between Egypt, Ethiopia,
and Arabia) who cannot even have their bodies clean, or their nakedness clothrd,
without pitying their miserable lot There is no indulgence, no forbearance for the
sick, the feeble, the aged, for woraan'i weakness. All must, forced by blows, work
on until death puts an end to their sufferings and their distress." ("Dtod. Sic. BiW.
Hist." lib. 8. c. 13.)

The Working Day. 261

The comparison of the greed for surplus-labour in the
Danubian Principalities with the same greed in English fac
tories has special interest, because surplus-labour, in the corvee
has an independent and palpable form.

Suppose the working day consists of 6 hours of necessary
labour, and 6 hours of surplus-labour. Then the free labourer
gives the capitalist every week 6 X 6 or 36 hours of surplus-
labour. It is the same as if he worked 3 days in the week for
himself, and 3 days in the week gratis for the capitalist. But
this is not evident on the surface. Surplus-labour and neces
sary labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express
the same relationship by saying, e.g., that the labourer in every
minute works 30 seconds for himself, and 30 for the capitalist,
etc. It is otherwise with the corvee. The necessary labour
which the Wallachian peasant does for his own maintenance is
distinctly marked off from his surplus-labour on behalf of the
Boyard. The one he does on his own field, the other on the
seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour-time exist, there
fore, independently, side by side one with the other. In the
corvee the surplus-labour is accurately marked off from the
necessary labour. This, however, can make no difference with
regard to the quantitative relation of surplus-labour to neces
sary labour. Three days' surplus-labour in the week remain
three days that yield no equivalent to the labourer himself,
whether it be called corvee or wage-labour. But in the capi
talist the greed for surplus-labour appears in the straining
after an unlimited extension of the working day, in the Boyard
more simply in a direct hunting after days of corvee.1

•In the Danubian Principalities the corvee was mixed up
with rents in kind and other appurtenances of bondage, but it
formed the most important tribute paid to the ruling class.
Where this was the case, the corvee rarely arose from serfdom ;
serfdom much more frequently on the other hand took origin
from the corvee.2 This is what took place in the Roumanian

1 That which follows refers to the situation in the Roumanian provinces before th«
change effected since the Crimean war.

1 This holds likewise for Germany, and especially for Prussia east of the Elbe.
In the 15th century the German peasant was nearly everywhere a man, who, whilst
•ubject to certain rents paid in produce and labour was otherwise at least practically

262 Capitalist Production.

Provinces. Their original mode of production was based on
community of the soil, but not in the Slavonic or Indian form.
Part of the land was cultivated in severalty as freehold by the
members of the community, another part — ager publicus — was
cultivated by them in common. The products of this common
labour served partly as a reserve fund against bad harvests and
other accidents, partly as a public store for providing the costs
of war, religion, and other common expenses. In course of
time military and clerical dignitaries usurped, along with the
common land, the labour spent upon it. The labour of the free;
peasants on their common land was transformed into corvee for
the thieves of the common land. This corvee soon developed
into a servile relationship existing in point of fact, not in ponr:
of law, until Russia, the liberator of the world, made it legal
under pretence of abolishing serfdom. The code of the corvee,
which the Eussian General Kisseleff proclaimed in 1831, was*
of course dictated by the Boyards themselves. Thus Russia
conquered with one blow the magnates of the Danubian prov
inces, and the applause of liberal cretins throughout Europe.

According to the "R^glement organique," as this code of tho
corvee is called, every Wallachian peasant owes to the so-called
landlord, besides a mass of detailed payments in kind: (1), 1SJ
days of general labour; (2), one day of field labour; (3), ono
day of wood carrying. In all, 14 days in the year. With
deep insight into political economy, however, the working day
is not taken in its ordinary sense, but as the working day neces
sary to the production of an average daily product; and tba*
average daily product is determined in so crafty a way that n<>
Cyclops would be done with it in 24 hours. In dry words, tk*
Reglement itself declares with true Russian irony that by 1"
working days one must understand the product of the manual
labour of 36 days, by 1 day of field labour 3 days, and by 1 day

free. The German colonists in Brandenburg, Pomerania, Silesia, and Eastern Prus
sia, were even legally acknowledged as free men. The victory of the nobility in thi
peasants' war put an end to that. Not only were the conquered South German
peasants again enslaved. From the middle of the 16th century the peasants o:
Eastern Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, and Silesia, and soon after the free peas
ants of Schleswig-Holstein were degraded to the condition of serfs. (Maurer,
Fronhofe iv. vol.,— Meitten, der Boden des preussischen Staats. — Hansen, Leibeiger-
schaft in Schleswig-Holstein. — ED.)

The Working Day. 263

of wood carrying in like manner three times as much. In all,
42 corvee days. To this had to be added the so-called jobagie,
service due to the lord for extraordinary occasions. In propor
tion to the size of its population, every village has to furnish
annually a definite contingent to the jobagie. This additional
corvee is estimated at 14 days for each Wallachian peasant
Thus the prescribed corvee amounts to 56 working days yearly.
But the agricultural year in Wallachia numbers in consequence
of the severe climate only 210 days, of which 40 for Sundays
and holidays, 30 on an average for bad weather, together 70
days, do not count. 140 working days remain. The ratio of
the corvee to the necessary labour f for 66f% gives a much
smaller rate of surplus-value than that which regulates the
labour of the English agricultural of factory labourer. This
is, however, only the legally prescribed corvee. And in a
spirit yet more "liberal" than the English Factory Acts, the
"Reglement organique" has known how to facilitate its own
evasion. After it has made 56 days out of 12, the nominal
days work of each of the 56 corvee days is again so arranged
that a portion of it must fall on the ensuing day. In one day,
e.g., must be weeded an extent of land, which, for this work,
especially in maize plantations, needs twice as much time.
The legal day's work for some kinds of agricultural labour is
interpretable in such a way that the day begins in May and
ends in October. In Moldavia conditions are still harder.
"The corvee days of the 'Reglement organique/ " cried a Boy-
ard, drunk with victory, "amount to 365 days in the year." l
If the Reglement organique of the Danubian provinces was
a positive expression of the greed for surplus-labour which
every paragraph legalised, the English Factory Acts are the
negative expression of the same greed. These acts curb the
passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour-power, by
forcibly limiting the working day by state regulations, made
by a state that is ruled by capitalist and landlord. Apart from
the working-class movement that daily grew more threatening,
the limiting of factory labour was dictated by the same neces-

1 Further details are to be found in E. Regnault's "Histoire politique et sociale d*t
Principautla Danubiennes." Paris, 1855.

264 Capitalist Production.

sity which spread guano over the English fields. The same

blind eagerness for plunder that in the one case exhausted the

soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living force of

, the nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as

I clearly as the diminishing military standard in Germany and

» France.1

The Factory Act of 1850 now in force (1867) allows for the
average working-day 10 hours, i.e., for the first 5 days 12
hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., including ^ an hour for breakfas;,
and an hour for dinner, and thus leaving 10£ working hours,
and 8 hours for Saturday, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., of which |
an hour is subtracted for breakfast. 60 working hours are
left, 10 J for each of the first 5 days, 7£ for the last.2 Certai.i
guardians of these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors, di
rectly under the Home Secretary, whose reports are published
half-yearly by order of Parliament. They give regular and
official statistics of the capitalistic greed for surplus-labour .
Let us listen, for a moment, to the Factory Inspectors.5

1 "In general and within certain limits, exceeding the medium size of their kinc ,
is evidence of the prosperity of organic beings. As to man, his bodily height lessen*
if his due growth is interfered with, either by physical or social condition*. In all
European countries in which the conscription holds, since its introduction, th;
medium height of adult men, and generally their fitness for military service, hai
diminished. Before the revolution (1789), the minimum for the infantry in Franc:
was 165 centimetres; in 1818 (law of March 10th), 157; by the law of 1852, 15<5
c. m. ; on the average in France more than half are rejected on account of deficien:
height or bodily weakness. The military standard in Saxony was in 1780, 178 c. m.
It is now 155. In Prussia it is 157. According to the statement of Dr. Meyer in
the Bavarian Gazette, May 9th, 1862, the result of an average of 9 years is, that ii.
Prussia out of 1000 conscripts 716 were unfit for military service, 317 because o:
deficiency in height, and 399 because of bodily defects. . . . Berlin in 1858
could not provide its contingent of recruits; it was 156 men short." J. von Liebig
"Die Chemie in mrer Anwendung auf Agrikultur und Physiologic, 1863," 7th Ed.,
vol 1., pp. 117, 118.

»The history of the Factory Act of 1850 will be found in the course of thb
chapter.

*I only touch here and there on the period from the beginning of modern in
dustry in England to 1845. For this period I refer the reader to "Die Lage dei
arbeitenden Klasse in England, von Friedrich Engels, Leipzig, 1845." How com
pletely Engels understood the nature of the capitalist mode of production is shown
by the Factory Reports, Reports on Mines, &c., that have appeared since 1845, and
how wonderfully he painted the circumstances in detail is seen on the most super
ficial comparison of his work with the official reports of the Children's Employment
Commission, published 18 to 20 years later (1863-1867). These deal especially with
the branches of industry in which the Factory Acts had not, up to 1862, been intro
duced, in fact are not yet introduced. Here, then, little ot no alteration had been
enforced, by authority, in the conditions painted by Engels. I borrow my examples

The Working Day. 265

"The fraudulent millowner begins work at a quarter of EJQ hour
(sometimes more, sometimes less) before 6 a.m., and leaves off
a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after
6 p.m. lie takes 5 minutes from the beginning and from the
end of the half hour nominally allowed for breakfast, and 10
minutes at the beginning and end of the hour nominally al
lowed for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour (some
times more, sometimes less after 2 p.m. on Saturday. Thus
his gain is

Before 6 a. m 15 minutes.

After 6 p. m 15

At breakfast time 10

At dinner time . . , 20 "

60
Five days — 300 minutes.

On Saturday before 6 £. m 15 minutes.

At breakfast time 10 "

After 2 p. m 15 "

40 minutes.
Total weekly 340 minutes.

Or 5 hours and 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50
working weeks in the year (allowing two for holidays and
occasional stoppages) is equal to 27 working days." l

"Five minutes a day's increased work, multiplied by 50
weeks, are equal to two and a half days of produce in the
year."9

"An additional hour a day gained by small instalments be
fore 6 a.m., after 6 p.m., and at the beginning and end of the

chiefly from the free trade period after 1848, that age of paradise, of which the
commercial travellers for the great firm of free trade, blatant as ignorant, tell such
fabulous tales. For the rest England figures here in the forground because she is
the classic representative of capitalist production, and she alone has a continuous
set of official statistics of the things we are considering.

1 Suggestions, &c. by Mr. L. Horner, Inspector of Factories in : Factory Regula
tions Act. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 9th August, 1859,
P. 4, 6.

"Reports of the Inspector of Factories for the 'ialf year, October, 1856, p. 85.

266 Capitalist Production.

times nominally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to work
ing 13 months in the year."1

.. Crises during which production is interrupted and the fac
tories work "short time," i.e., for only a part of the week,
naturally do not affect the tendency to extend the working
day. The less business there is, the more profit has to be made
on the business done. The less time spent in work, the more
of that time has to be turned into surplus labour-time.

Thus the Factory Inspector's report on the period of tho
crisis from 1857 to 1858 :

"It may seem inconsistent that there should be any over
working at a time when trade is so bad; but that very bad
ness leads to the transgression by unscrupulous men, they ge;

the extra profit of it In the last half year, says Leonard

Homer, 122 mills in my district have been given up ; 143 wero
found standing," yet, overwork is continued beyond the legal
hours.2

"For a great part of the time," says Mr. Howell, "owing to
the depression of trade, many factories were altogether closed,
and a still greater number were working short time. I continue,
however, to receive about the usual number of complaints tha ;
half, or three-quarters of an hour in the day, are snatched from
the workers by encroaching upon the times professedly allowed
for rest and refreshment." 8 The same phenomenon was repro
duced on a smaller scale during the frightful cotton-crisis from
1861 to 1865. 4 "It is sometimes advanced by way of excuse,
when persons are found at work in a factory, either at a mea.
hour, or at some illegal time, that they will not leave the mill a';
the appointed hour, and that compulsion is necessary to force
them to cease work [cleaning their machinery, &c.], especially
on Saturday afternoons. But, if the hands remain in a factor}
after the machinery has ceased to revolve . . . they would not
have been so employed if sufficient time had been set apart

1 Reports, &c., 30th April, 1858, p. 9.

1 Reports, &c., 1. c., p. 43.

• Reports, &c., 1. c., p. 25.

4 Reports, &c., for the half year ending 30th April, 1861. Sec Appendix No. 2;
Reports, &c., 31st October, 1862, p. 7, 62, 63. The violations of the Acts becarne
more numerous during the last half year 1863. Cf. Reports, &c., ending 31st
October, 1863, p. 7.

The Working Day. 267

specially for cleaning, &c., either before 6 a.m. [sic /] or before
2 p. m. on Saturday afternoons."1

"The profit to be gained by it (over-working in violation of
the Act) appears to be, to many, a greater temptation than they
can resist; they calculate upon the chance of not being found
out; and when they see the small amount of penalty and costs,
which those who have been convicted have had to pay, they
find that if they should be detected there will still be a con
siderable balance of gain. . . .2 In cases where the additional
time is gained by a multiplication of small thefts in the course
of the day, there are insuperable difficulties to the inspectors
making out a case."3

These "small thefts" of capital from the labourer's meal and
recreation time, the factory inspectors also designate as "petty
pilfering of minutes,"4 "snatching a few minutes,"5 or, aa
the labourers technically called them, "nibbling and cribbling
at meal times."6

It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of sur
plus-value by surplus-labour, is not secret. "If you allow me,"
said a highly respectable master to me, "to work only ten min
utes in the day over-time, you put one thousand a year in my
pocket."7 "Moments are the elements of profit."8

1 Reports, &c., October 31st, 1860, p. 23. With what fanaticism, according to the
evidence of manufacturers given in courts of law, their hands set themselves against
every interruption in factory labour, the following curious circumstance shows. In
the beginning of June, 1836, information reached the magistrates of Dewsbury
(Yorkshire) that the owners of 8 large mills in the neighbourhood of Batley had
violated the Factory Acts. Some of these gentlemen were accused of having kept
at work 6 boys between 12 and 15 years of age, from 6 a.m. on Friday to 4 p.m. on
the following Saturday, not allowing them any respite except for meals and one
hour for sleep at midnight. And these children had to do this ceaseless labour of
30 hours in the "shoddy-hole," as the hole is called, in which the woolen rags are
pulled in pieces, and where a dense atmosphere of dust, shreds, &c., forces even the
adult workman to cover his mouth continually with handkerchiefs for the protec
tion of his lungs! The accused gentlemen affirm in lieu of taking an oath — as
quakers they were too scrupulously religious to take an oath — that they had, in their
great compassion for the unhappy children, allowed them four hours for sleep, but
the obstinate children absolutely would not go to bed. The quaker gentlemen
were mulcted in £20. Dryden anticipated these gentry:
"Fox full fraught in seeming santftity,
That feared an oath, but like the devil would lie.
That look'd like Lent, and had the holy leer,
And durst not sinJ before he said his prayer 1"

8 Rep., 31st Oct., 1856, p. 84. • 1. c. p., p. 48. • 1. c., p. 48.

•1. c., p. 35. M. c., p. 48. M. c., p. 4«.

•Report of the Insp., &c., 30th April, 1860, p. 60.

268 Capitalist Production.

Nothing is from this point of view more characteristic than
the designation of the workers who work full time as "full-
timers," and the children under 13 who are only allowed to
work 6 hours as "half-timers." The worker is here nothing
more than personified labour-time. All individual distinctions
are merged in those of "full-timers" and "half-timers."1

SECTION 3. BRANCHES OF ENGLISH INDUSTRY WITHOUT LEGAL

LIMITS TO EXPLOITATION.

We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extension of
the working day, the were-wolf's hunger for surplus-labour in
a department where the monstrous exactions, not surpassed,
says an English bourgeois economist, by the cruelties of tho
Spaniards to the American red-skins,2 caused capital at last to
be bound by the chains of legal regulations. Now, let us cast
a glance at certain branches of production in which the exploi
tation of labour is either free from fetters to this day, or was
so yesterday.

Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared a<j
chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Notting
ham, on the 14th of January, 1860, "that there was an amount;
of privation and suffering among that portion of the popula
tion connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts o :
the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized world . . . Children o::
nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two,
three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for
a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their
limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faceM
whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-
like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate We are my,

surprised that Mr. Mallett, or any other manufacturer, shoulc.
stand forward and protest against discussion The

1 This is the official expression both in the factories and in the reports.

8 "The cupidity of mill-owners whose cruelties in the pursuit of gain have hardly
been exceeded by those perpetrated by the Spaniards in the conquest of America ir
the pursuit of gold." John Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes, 3rd
Ed. London, 1835, p. 114. The theoretical part of this book, a kind of hand-book o:'
Political Economy, i«, considering the time of its publication, original in some parts,
e.g., on commercial crises. The historical part is, to a great extent, a shameless
plagiarism of Sir F. M. Eden's "History of the Poor," London, 1799.

The Working Day. 269

system, as the Rev. Montagu Valpy describes it, is one of
unmitigated slavery, socially, physically, morally, and spirit
ually What can be thought of a town which holds a public

meeting to petition that the period of labour for men shall be

diminished to eighteen hours a day? We declaim

against the Virginian and Carolina cotton-planters. Is their
black-market, their lash, and their barter of human flesh more
detestable than this slow sacrifice of humanity which takes
place in order that veils and collars may be fabricated for the
benefit of capitalists ?'n

The potteries of Staffordshire have, during the last 22 years,
been the subject of three parliamentary inquiries. The result
is embodied in Mr. Scriven's Report of 1841 to the "Children's
Employment Commissioners," in the report of Dr. Greenhow
of 1860 published by order of the medical officer of the Privy
Council (Public Health, 3rd Report, 112-113), lastly, in the
report of Mr. Longe of 1862 in the "First Report of the
Children's Employment Commission, of the 13th June, 1863."
For my purpose it is enough to take, from the reports of 1860
and 1863, some depositions of the exploited children them
selves. From the children we may form an opinion as to the
adults, especially the girls and women, and that in a branch of
industry by the side of which cotton-spinning appears an agree
able and healthful occupation.2

, William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when
he began to work. He "ran moulds" (carried ready-moulded
articles into the drying room, afterwards bringing back the
empty mould) from the beginning. He came to work every
day in the week at 6 a.m., and left off about 9 p.m. "I work
till 9 o'clock at night six days in the week. I have done so
seven or eight weeks." Fifteen hours of labour for a child of
7 years old ! J. Murray, 12 years of age, says : "I turn jigger,
and run moulds. I come at 6. Sometimes I come at 4. I
worked all last night, till 6 o'clock this morning. I have not
been in bed since the night before last. There were eight or
nine other boys working last night. All but one have come this

1 "Daily Telegraph," 17th January, 1860.
•Cf. F. Engels' Lage, etc., p. 249-61.

270 Capitalist Production.

morning. I get 3 shillings and sixpence. I do not get any
more for working at night. I worked two nights last week."
Fernyhough, a boy of ten: "I have not always an hour (for
dinner). I have only half an hour sometimes; on Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday."1

Dr. Greenhow states that the average duration of life in the
pottery districts of Stoke-on-Trent, and Wolstanton is ex
traordinarily short. Although in the district of Stoke, only
36.6% and in Wolstanton only 30.4% of the adult male
population above 20 are employed in the potteries, among tho
men of that age in the first district more than half, in tho
second, nearly f of the whole deaths are the result of pul
monary diseases among the potters. Dr. Boothroyd, a medical
practitioner at Hanley, says: "Each successive generation o:f
potters is more dwarfed and less robust than the preceding
one." In like manner another doctor, Mr. M'Bean : "Since ho
began to practise among the potters 25 years ago, he has ob
served a marked degeneration especially shown in diminution
of stature and breadth." These statements are taken from tho
report of Dr. Greenhow in I860.2

From the report of the Commissioners in 1863, the follow
ing: Dr. J. T. Arledge, senior physician of the North Staf
fordshire Infirmary, says: "The potters as a class, both mer.
and women, represent a degenerated population, both phys
ically and morally. They are, as a rule, stunted in growth
ill-shaped, and frequently ill-formed in the chest ; they becomo
prematurely old, and are certainly short-lived; they are
phlegmatic and bloodless, and exhibit their debility of consti
tution by obstinate attacks of dyspepsia, and disorders of thci
liver and kidneys, and by rheumatism. But of all diseases
they are especially prone to chest-disease, to pneumonia,
phthisis, bronchitis, and asthma. One form would appear pe
culiar to them, and is known as potter's asthma, or potter'*
consumption. Scrofula attacking the glands, or bones, or othei
parts of the body, is a disease of two-thirds or more of the

'* Children's Employment Commission. First report, etc., 1868. Evidence, p. 16,
19, 18.

•Public Health, 3rd report, etc., p. 102, 104, 106.

The Working Day. 271

potters That the 'degenerescence* of the population of

this district is not even greater than it is, is due to the constant
recruiting from the adjacent country, and intermarriages with
more healthy races."1

Mr. Charles Parsons, late house surgeon of the same institu
tion, writes in a letter to Commissioner Longe, amongst other
things : "I can only speak from personal observation and not
from statistical data( but I do not hesitate to assert that my
indignation has been aroused again and again at the sight of
poor children whose health has been sacrificed to gratify the
avarice of either parents or employers." He enumerates the
causes of the diseases of the potters, and sums them up in the
phrase, "long hours." The report of the Commission trusts
that "a manufacture which has assumed so prominent a place
in the whole world, will not long be subject to the remark that
its great success is accompanied with the physical deterioration,
wide-spread bodily suffering, and early death of the work
people . . by whose labour and skill such great results have
been achieved."2 And all that holds of the potteries in Eng
land is true of those in Scotland.8

The manufacture of lucifer matches dates from 1833, from
the discovery of the method of applying phosphorus to the
match itself. Since 1845 this manufacture has rapidly devel
oped in England, and has extended especially amongst the
thickly populated parts of London as well as in Manchester,
Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle and Glas
gow. With it has spread the form of lockjaw, which a Vienna
physician in 1845 discovered to be a disease peculiar to lucifer-
matchmakers. Half the workers are children under thirteen,
and young persons under eighteen. The manufacture is on
account of its unhealthiness and unpleasantness in such bad
odour that only the most miserable part of the labouring class,
half-starved widows and so forth, deliver up their children
to it, "the ragged, half-starved, untaught children."4

Of the witnesses that Commissioner White examined

1 Child. Empl. Comm. I. Report, p. 24.

• Children's Employment Commission, p. 22, and xi

•1. c. p. xlvii.

•I. c. p. liv.

272 Capitalist Production.

(1863), 270 were under 18, 50 under 10, 10 only 8, and 5
only 6 years old. A range of the working day from 12 to 14
or 15 hours, night-labour, irregular meal times, meals for the
most part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent with
phosphorus. Dante would have found the worst horrors of his
Inferno surpassed in this manufacture.

In the manufacture of paper-hangings the coarser sorts are
printed by machine; the finer by hand (block-printing). The
most active business months are from the beginning of October
to the end of April. During this time the work goes on fast
and furious without intermission from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. or
further into the night.

J. Leach deposes: "Last winter six out of nineteen girls
were away from ill-health at one time from over-work. I have
to bawl at them to keep them awake." W. Duffy: "I have
seen when the children could none of them keep their eyes
open for the work ; indeed, none of us could." J. Lightbourne :
"Am 13 ... We worked last winter till 9 (evening), and the
winter before till 10. I used to cry with sore feet every night
last winter." G. Apsden : "That boy of mine . . . when he
was 7 years old I used to carry him on my back to and fro
through the snow, and he used to have 16 hours a day ... I
have often knelt down to feed him as he stood by the machine,
for he could not leave it or stop." Smith, the managing
partner of a Manchester factory : "We (he means his "hands"
who work for "us") work on, with no stoppage for meals, so
that the day's work of 10J hours is finished by 4.30. p.m., and
all after that is overtime."1 (Does this Mr. Smith take no
meals himself during 10£ hours?) "We (this same Smith)
seldom leave off working before 6 p.m. (he means leave off the
consumption of 'our' labour-power machines), so that we
(iterum Crispinus) are really working overtime the whole year
round For all these, children and adults alike (152

1 This is not to be taken in the same sense as our surplus-labour time. These
gentlemen consider 10^ hours of labour as the normal working day, which includes
of course the normal surplus-labour. After this begins "overtime" which is paid a
little better. It will be seen later that the labour expended during the so-called
normal day is paid below its value, so that the overtime is simply a capitalist trick
in order to extort more surplus-labor, which it would still be, even if the labour-
power expended during the normal working day were properly paid

The Working Day. 273

children and young persons and 140 adults), the average work
for the last 18 months has been at the very least 7 days, 5
hours, or 78-J hours a week. For the six weeks ending May
2nd this year (1862), the average was higher — 8 days or 84
hours a week." Still this same Mr. Smith, who is so extremely
devoted to the pluralis majestatis, adds with a smile, "Machine
work is not great." So the employers in the block-printing
say : "Hand labour is more healthy than machine-work." On
the whole, manufacturers declare with indignation against tho
proposal "to stop the machines at least during meal times/
A clause, says Mr. Otley, manager of a wall-paper factory in
the Borough, "which allowed work between, say 6 a.m. and 9
p.m. . . . would suit us (!) very well, but the factory hours, 6
a.m. to 6 p.m., are not suitable. Our machine is always
stopped for dinner. (What generosity!) There is no waste
of paper and colour to speak of. But," he adds sympatheti
cally, "I can understand the loss of time not being liked.'
The report of the Commission opines with naivete that the
fear of some "leading firms" of losing time, i.e., the time for
appropriating the labour of others, and thence losing profit
is not a sufficient reason for allowing children under 13, and
young persons under 18, working 12 to 16 hours per day, to
lose their dinner, nor for giving it to them as coal and water
are supplied to the steam-engine, soap to wool, oil to the
wheel — as merely auxiliary material to the instruments of
labour, during the process of production itself.1

•No branch of industry in England (we do not take into
account the making of bread by machinery recently intro
duced) has preserved up to the present day a method of pro
duction so archaic, so — as we see from the poets of the Roman
Empire — pre-christian, as baking. But capital, as was said
earlier, is at first indifferent as to the technical character of the
labour-process; it begins by taking it ju?t as it finds it.

The incredible adulteration of bread, especially in London,
was first revealed by the House of Commons Committee "OH
the adulteration of articles of food'* (1855-56), and Dr.

1L c. Evidence, p. 123, 124, 125, 140, and 04.

274 Capitalist Production.

HassaH's work, "Adulterations detected."1 The consequence
of these revelations was the Act of August 6th, 1860, "for
preventing the adulteration of articles of food and drink," an
inoperative law; as it naturally shows the tenderest consider
ation for every free-trader who determines by the buying or
selling of adulterated commodities "to turn an honest penny."2
The Committee itself formulated more or less naively its con
viction that free-trade meant essentially trade with adulter
ated, or as the English ingeniously put it, "sophisticated"
goods. In fact this kind of sophistry knows better than Prota
goras how to make white black, and black white, and better
than the Eleatics how to demonstrate ad oculos that everything
is only appearance.3

At all events the committee had directed the attention of
the public to its "daily bread," and therefore to the baking
trade. At the same time in public meetings and in petitions
to Parliament rose the cry of the London journeymen bakers
against their over-work, &c. The cry was so urgent that Mr.
H. S. Tremenheere, also a member of the Commission of 1863
several times mentioned, was appointed Royal Commissioner
of Inquiry. His report,4 together with the evidence given,
roused not the heart of the public but its stomach. English
men, always well up in the Bible, knew well enough that man,
unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or sinecurist,

1 Alum finely powdered, or mixed with salt, is a normal article of commerce bear
ing the significant name qf "bakers' stuff."

* Soot is a well-known and very energetic form of carbon, and forms a manure
that capitalistic chimney-sweeps sell to English farmers. Now in 1862 the British
juryman had in a law-suit to decide whether soot, with which, unknown to the
buyer 90% of dust and sand are mixed, is genuine soot in the commercial sense or
adulterated soot in the legal sense. The "amis du commerce" decided it to be
genuine commercial soot, and non-suited the plaintiff farmer, who had in addition
to pay the costs of the suit.

1 The French chemist, Chevallier, in his treatise on the "sophistications" of
commodities, enumerates for many of the 600 or more articles which he passes in
review, 10, 20, 30 different methods of adulteration. He adds that he does not know
all the methods, and does not mention all that he knows. He gives 6 kinds of
adulteration of sugar, 9 of olive oil, 10 of butter, 12 of salt, 19 of milk, 20 of
.bread, 23 of brandy, 24 of meal, 28 of chocolate, 30 of wine, 32 of coffee, etc.
Even God Almighty does not escape this fate. See Ronard de Card, on the falsifi
cations of the materials of the Sacrament. (De la falsification des substances sacra
mentelles, Paris, 1856.)

* "Report, &c., relating to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers
ftc., London, 1862," and "Second Report &c., London, 1863."

The Working Day. 275

is commanded to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, but
they did not know that he had to eat daily in his bread a certain
quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge of
abcesses, cobwebs, dead black-beetles, and putrid German yeast,
without counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral in
gredients. Without any regard to his holiness, Freetrade, the
free baking-trade was therefore placed under the supervision
of the State inspectors (Close of the Parliamentary session of
1863), and by the same Act of Parliament, work from 9 in the
evening to 5 in the morning was forbidden for journeymen
bakers under 18. The last clause speaks volumes as to the
over-work in this old-fashioned, homely line of business.

"The work of a London journeyman baker begins, as a rule,
at about eleven at night. At that hour he 'makes the dough/
— a laborious process, which lasts from half-an-hour to three
quarters of an hour, according to the size of the batch or the
labour bestowed upon it He then lies down upon the knead-
ing-board, which is also the covering of the trough in which
the dough is 'made / and with a sack under him, and another
rolled up as a pillow, he sleeps for about a couple of hours.
He is then engaged in a rapid and continuous labour for about
five hours — throwing out the dough, 'scaling it off/ moulding
it, putting it into the oven, preparing and baking rolls and
fancy bread, taking the batch bread out of the oven, and up
into the shop, &c., &c. The temperature of a bakehouse ranges
from about 75 to upwards of 90 degrees, and in the smaller
bakehouses approximates usually to the higher rather than to
the lower degree of heat. When the business of making the
bread, rolls, &c., is over, that of its distribution begins, and a
considerable proportion of the journeymen in the trade, after
working hard in the manner described during the night, are
upon their legs for many hours during the day, carrying bas
kets, or wheeling hand-carts, and sometimes again in the bake
house, leaving off work at various hours between 1 and 6 pan.
according to the season of the year, or the amount and nature
of their master's business; while others are again engaged in
the bakehouse in 'bringing out' more batches until late in the

276 Capitalist Production.

, afternoon.1 . . . During what is called 'the London season/ the
operatives belonging to the 'full-priced' bakers at the West
End of the to\vn; generally begin work at 11 p.m., and are en
gaged in making the bread, with one or two short (sometimes
very short) intervals of rest, up to 8 o'clock the next morning.
They are then engaged all day long, up to 4, 5, 6, and as late
as 7 o'clock in the evening carrying out bread, or sometimes in
the afternoon in the bakehouse again, assisting in the biscuit-
baking. They may have, after they have done their work,
sometimes five or six, sometimes only four or five hours' sleep
before they begin again. On Fridays they always begin
sooner, some about ten o'clock, and continue in some cases, at
work, either in making or delivering the bread up to 8 p.m. on
Saturday night, but more generally up to 4 or 5 o'clock,
Sunday morning. On Sundays the men must attend twice or
three times during the day for an hour or two to make prepa
rations for the next day's bread The men employed

by the underselling masters (who sell their bread under the
'full price,' and who, as already pointed out, comprise three-
fourths of the London bakers) have not only to work on the
average longer hours, but their work is almost entirely confined
to the bakehouse. The underselling masters generally sell their
bread .... in the shop. If they send it out, which is not com
mon, except as supplying chandlers' shops, they usually employ
other hands for that purpose. It is not their practice to deliver

bread from house to house. Towards the end of the week

the men begin on Thursday night at 10 o'clock, and continue on
with only slight intermission until late on Saturday evening."2
VEven the bourgeois intellect understands the position of the
"underselling" masters. "The unpaid labour of the men was
made the source whereby the competition was carried on."3
And the "full-priced" baker denounces his underselling com
petitors to the Commission of Inquiry as thieves of foreign
labour and adulterators. "They only exist now by first de
frauding the public, and next getting 18 hours work out of
their men for 12 hours' wages."4

•1. c. First Report, &c., p. vi.

•1. c. p. Ixxi. "George Read, The History of Baking, London, 1848, p. 16.

•Report (First) &c. Evidence of the "full-priced" bak«r Cheeseman, p. 103.

The Working Day. 277

The adulteration of bread and the formation of a class of
bakers that sells the bread below the full price, date from the
beginning of the 18th century, from the time when the
corporate character of the trade was lost, and the capitalist in
the form of the miller or flour-factor, rises behind the nominal
master baker.1 Thus was laid the foundation of capitalistic
production in this trade, of the unlimited extension of the
working day and of night labour; although the latter only
since 1824 gained a serious footing, even in London.2

After what has just been said, it will be understood that the
Report of the Commission classes journeymen bakers among
the short-lived labourers, who, having by good luck escaped the
normal decimation of the children of the working-class, rarely
reach the age of 42. Nevertheless, the baking trade is always
overwhelmed with applicants. The sources of the supply of
these labour-powers to London are Scotland, the western agri
cultural districts of England, and Germany.

*In the years 1858-60, the journeymen bakers in Ireland
organized at their own expense great meetings to agitate
against night and Sunday work. The public — e.g., at the
Dublin meeting in May, 1860 — took their part with Irish
warmth. As a result of this movement, Jay labor alone was
successfully established in Wexford, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Water-
ford, &c. aln Limerick, where the grievances of the journey
men are demonstrated to be excessive, the movement has been
defeated by the opposition of the master bakers, the miller
bakers being the greatest opponents. The example of Limerick
led to a retrogression in Ennis and Tipperary. In Cork, where
the strongest possible demonstration of feeling took place, the
masters, by exercising their power of turning the men out of
employment, have defeated the movement. In Dublin, the
master bakers have offered the most determined opposition to

1 George Read, 1. c. At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th cen
turies the factors (agents) that crowded into every possible trade were still de
nounced as "public nuisances." Thus the Grand Jury at the quarter session of the
Justices of the Peace for the County of Somerset, addressed a presentment to the
Lower House which, among other things, states, "that these factors of Blackwell Hall
are a Public Nuisance and Prejudice to, the Clothing Trade, and ought to be put
down as a Nuisance." The case of our English Wool, &c., London, 1685, p. «, 7.

•First Report, &c.

278 Capitalist Production.

the movement, and by discountenancing as much as possible
the journeymen promoting it, have succeeded in leading the
men into acquiescence in Sunday work and night work, con
trary to the convictions of the men.771

The Committee of the English Government, which Govern
ment, in Ireland, is armed to the teeth, and generally knows
how to show it, remonstrates in mild, though funereal, tones
with the implacable master bakers of Dublin, Limerick, Cork,
£c. : "The Committee believe that the hours of labour are
limited by natural laws, which cannot be violated with im
punity. That for master bakers to induce their workmen, by
the fear of losing employment, to violate their religious con
victions and their better feelings, to disobey the laws of the
land, and to disregard public opinion (this all refers to Sunday
labour), is calculated to provoke ill-feeling between workmen
and masters, . . . and affords an example dangerous to religion,
morality, and social order. . . . The Committee believe that
any constant work beyond 12 hours a-day encroaches on the
domestic and private life of the working man, and so leads to
disastrous moral results, interfering with each man's home, and
the discharge of his family duties as a son, a brother, a hus
band, a father. That work beyond 12 hours has a tendency to
undermine the health of the working man, and so leads to
premature old age and death, to the great injury of families of
working men, thus deprived of the care and support of the
head of the family when most required."2

So far, we have dealt with Ireland. On the other side of
the channel, in Scotland, the agricultural labourer, the plough
man, protests against his 13-14 hours' work in the most in
clement climate, with 4 hours' additional work on Sunday (in
this land of Sabbatarians!),3 whilst, at the same time, three
railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury — a
guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway
accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another
world. The negligence of the employes is the cause of the

1 Report of Committee on the Baking Trade in Ireland for 1861.
« I. c.

• Public meeting of agricultural labourers at Lasswade, near Edinburgh, January
ftth, 1866. (See "Workman's Advocate," January 13th, 1866.) The formation

The Working Day. 279

misfortune. They declare with one voice before the jury that
ten or twelve years before, their labour only lasted eight hours
a-day. During the last five or six years it had been screwed
up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pres
sure of holiday-makers, at times of excursion trains, it often
lasted for 40 or 50 hours without a break. They were ordinary
men, not Cyclops. At a certain point their labour-power
failed. Torpor seized them. Their brain ceased to think, their
eyes to see. The thoroughly "respectable" British jurymen
answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a
charge of manslaughter, and, in a gentle "rider" to their ver
dict, expressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of
the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the
purchase of a sufficient quantity of labour-power, and more
"abstemious," more "self-denying," more "thrifty," in the
draining of paid labour-power.1

From the motley crowd of labourers of all callings, ages,

since the close of 1865 of a Trades' Union among the agricultural labourers at first
in Scotland is a historic event In one of the most oppressed agricultural districts
of England, Buckinghamshire, the labourers, in March, 1867, made a great strike for
the raising of their weekly wage from 9-10 shillings to 12 shillings. (It will be seen
from the preceding passage that the movement of the English agricultural proletariat,
entirely crushed since the suppression of its violent manifestations after 1830, and
especially since the introduction of the new Poor Laws, begins again in the sixties,
until it becomes finally epoch-making in 1872. I return to this in the 2nd volume,
as well as to the blue books that have appeared since 1867 on the position of the Eng
lish land labourers. Addendum to the 3rd ed.)

1 "Reynolds' Newspaper," January, 1866. — Every week this same paper has,
under the sensational headings, "Fearful and fatal accidents," "Appalling tragedies,"
&c., a whole list of fresh railway catastrophes. On these an employe" on the North
Staffordshire line comments: "Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if
the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on the look-out.
How can that be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 80
hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest. The following is an example which
is of very frequent occurrence: — One fireman commenced work on the Monday morn
ing at a very early hour. When he had finished what is called a day's work, he had
been on duty 14 hours 50 minutes. Before he had time to get his tea, he was
again called on for duty. . . . The next time he finished he had been on duty 14
hours 25 minutes, making a total of 29 hours 15 minutes without intermission.
The rest of the week's work was made up as follows: — Wednesday, 15 hours; Thurs
day, 15 hours 85 minutes; Friday, 14 Yi hours; Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making
a total for the week of 88 hours 40 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on
being paid 6J4 days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he applied to the time
keeper, . . . and inquired what they considered a day's work, and was told 18
hours for a good man (i.e., 78 hours. ... He then asked for what he had made
over and above the 78 hours per week, but was refused. However, he was at last
told they would give him another quarter, »,»., lOd." 1. c,, 4th February, I860.

a8o Capitalist Production.

sexes, that press on us more busily than the souls of the slain
on Ulysses, on whom — without referring to the blue books
under their arms — we see at a glance the mark of over-work,
let us take two more figures whose striking contrast proves
that before capital all men are alike — a milliner and a black
smith.

* In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily papers
published a paragraph with the "sensational" heading "Death
from simple over-work." It dealt with the death of the
milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of age, employed in a
highly-respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a
lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told
story,1 was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an
average, 16£ hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a
break, whilst her failing labour-power was revived by occasional
supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just now the height
of the season. It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling
of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to
the ball in honour of the newly-imported Princess of Wales.
Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26 £
hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded ^
of the cubic feet of air required for them. At night, they slept
in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the bedroom was
divided by partitions of board.2 And this was one of the best

*Cf. F. Engels. 1. c., pp. 253, 154.

•Dr. Lctheby, Consulting Physician of the Board of Health, declared: "The mini
mum of air for each adult ought to be in a sleeping room 300, and in a dwelling
room 500 cubic feet." Dr. Richardson, Senior Physician to one of the London
Hospitals: "With needlewomen of all kinds, including milliners, dressmakers, and
ordinary sempstresses, there are three miseries — over-work, deficient air, and either
deficient food or deficient digestion. . . . Needlework, in the main, ... is
infinitely better adapted to women than to men. But the mischiefs of the trade,
in the metropolis especially, are that it is monopolised by some twenty-six capitalists,
who, under the advantages that spring from capital, can bring in capital to forct
economy out of labour. This power tells throughout the whole class. If a dress-
makei can get a little circle of customers, such is the competition that, in her
home, she must work to the death to hold together, and this same over-work she
must of necessity inflict on any who may assist her. If she fail, or do not try
independently, she must join an establishment, where her labour is not less, but
where her money is safe. Placed thus, she becomes a mere slave, tossed about with
the variations of society. Now at home, in one room, starving, or near to it, then
engaged 15, 16, aye, even 18 hours out of the 24, in an air that is scarcely tolerable,
and on food which, even if it be good, cannot be digested in the absence of pure

The Working Day. 281

millinery establishments in London. Mary Anne Walkley fell
ill on the Friday; died on Sunday, without, to the astonish
ment of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work
in hand. The doctor, Mr. Keys, called too late to the death
bed, duly bore witness before the coroner's jury that "Mary
Anne Walkley had died from long hours of work in an over
crowded workroom, and a too small and badly-ventilated bed
room." In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners,
the coroner's jury thereupon brought in a verdict that "the
deceased had died of apoplexy, but there was reason to fear
that her death had been accelerated by over-work in an over
crowded workroom, &c." "Our white slaves," cried the "Morn
ing Star," the organ of the free-traders, Cobden and Bright,
"our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most
part silently pine and die."1

"It is not in dressmakers' rooms that working to death is
the order of the day, but in a thousand other places ; in every
place I had almost said, where 'a thriving business' has to be
done. . . . We will take the blacksmith as a type. If
the poets were true, there is no mqn so hearty, so merry, as
the blacksmith ; he rises early and strikes his sparks before
the sun ; he eats and drinks and sleeps as no other man.
Working in moderation, he is, in fact, in one of the best of

air. On these victims, consumption, which is purely a disease of bad air, feeds."
Dr. Richardson: "Work and Overwork," in "Social Science Review," 18th July,
1863.

1 "Morning Star," 23rd June, 1863. — The "Times" made use of the circumstance
to defend the American slave owners against Bright, &c. "Very many of us think,"
says a leader of July 2nd, 1868, "that, while we work our own young women to
death, using the scourge of starvation, instead of the crack of the whip, as the
instrument of compulsion, we have scarcely a right to hound on fire and slaughter
against families who were born slave owners, and who, at least, feed their slaves
well, and work them lightly." In the same manner, the "Standard," a Tory organ,
fell foul of the Rev. Newman Hall: "He excommunicated the slave owners, but
prays with the fine folk who, without remorse, make the omnibus drivers and con
ductors of London, &c., work 16 hours a-day for the wages of a dog." Finally,
spake the oracle, Thomas Carlyle, of whom I wrote, in 1850, "Zum Teufel ist der
Genius, der Kultus ist geblieben." In a short parable, he reduces the one great
event of contemporary history, the American civil war, to this level, that the Peter
of the North wants to break the bead of the Paul of the South with all his might,
because the Peter of the North hires his labour by the day, and the Paul of the
South hires his by the life. ("Macmillan's Magazine." Ilias Americana in nuce.
August, 1863.) Thus, the bubble of Tory sympathy for the urban workers — by no
means for the rural — has burst at last. The sum of all is — slavery 1

282 Capitalist Production.

human positions, physically speaking. But we follow him into
the city or town, and we see the stress of work on that strong
man, and what then is his position in the death-rate of his
country. In Marylebone, blacksmiths die at the rate of 31 per
thousand per annum, or 11 above the mean of the male adults
of the country in its entirety. The occupation, instinctive
almost as a portion of human art, unobjectionable as a branch
of human industry, is made by mere excess of work, the de
stroyer of the man. He can strike so many blows per day,
walk so many steps, breathe so many breaths, produce so much
work, and live an average, say of fifty years; he is made to
strike so many more blows, to walk so many more, steps, to
breathe so many more breaths per day, and to increase alto
gether a fourth of his life. He meets the effort ; the result is,
that producing for a limited time a fourth more work, he dies
at 37 for 50."1

SECTION 4. DAY AND NIGHT WORK. THE REULY SYSTEM.

Constant capital, the means of production, considered from
the standpoint of the creation of surplus-value, only exist to
absorb labour, and with every drop of labour a proportional
quantity of surplus-labour. While they fail to do this, their
mere existence causes a relative loss to the capitalist, for they
represent during the time they lie fallow, a useless advance of
capital. And this loss becomes positive and absolute as soon
as the intermission of their employment necessitates additional
outlay at the recommencement of work. The prolongation of
the working day beyond the limits of the natural day, into
the night, only acts as a palliative. It quenches only in a slight
degree the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour. To
appropriate labour during all the 24 hours of the day is, there
fore, the inherent tendency of capitalist production. But as it
is physically impossible to exploit the same individual labour-
power constantly during the night as well as the day, to over
come this physical hindrance, an alternation becomes necessary
between the workpeople whose powers are exhausted by day,

1 Dr. Richardson, 1. c.

The Working Day. 283

and those who are used up by night. This alternation may be
effected in various ways ; e.g., it may be so arranged that part
of the workers are one week employed on day work, the next
week on night work. It is well-known that this relay system,
this alternation of two sets of workers, held full sway in the
full-blooded youth-time of the English cotton manufacture, and
that at the present time it still flourishes, among others, in the
cotton spinning of the Moscow district This 24 hours' process
of production exists to-day as a system in many of the branches
of industry of Great Britain that are still "free," in the
blast-furnaces, forges, plate-rolling mills, and other metal
lurgical establishments in England, Wales, and Scotland. The
working time here includes, besides the 24 hours of the 6
working days, a great part also of the 24 hours of Sunday.
The workers consist of men and women, adults and children
of both sexes. The ages of the children and young persons run
through all intermediate grades, from 8 (in some cases from 6)
to 18.1

In some branches of industry, the girls and women work
through the night together with the males.2

Placing on one side the generally injurious influence of
night-labour,8 the duration of the process of production, un-

1 Children's Employment Commission. Third Report. Lond::1., 1864, j. iv., v., vi.

a "Both in Staffordshire and in oouth Wale~ ;roun j girls an.\ women are employed
on the pit banks and on the coke heaps, not only ' >y -^ay but also by night. This
practice has been often noticed in Reports presente '. .o Parliament, as being attended
with great and notorious evils. These females err ployed with the men, hardly dis
tinguished from them in their dress, and b grimed with dirt and smoke, are exposed
to the deterioration of character, arising from the loss of :: elf -respect, which can
hardly fail to follow from their unfeminine occupation." (1. c. 194., p. xxvi. Cf.
Fourth Report (1865), 61, p. xiii.) It is the same in glass-works.

•A steel manufacturer wuo employs children in night labour remarked: "It
seems but natural that boys who work r.t night cann.«t 'leep and get proper rest by
day, but will be running about." (1. c. Fourth Report, 63, p. xiii.) On the im
portance of sunlight for the maintenance and growth of t! ; body, a physician
writes: "Light also acts upi i tho tissues of the body directly in hardening them
and supporting their elasticity. The muscles ^f animals, when they are deprived
of a proper amount of light, become soft and inelastic, the nervous power loses itt
tone from defective stimulation, and the elaboration of all growth seems to b«
perverted. ... In the case of children, constant access to plenty of light during
the day, and to the direct rays of the sun for a part of it, is most essential to
health. Light assists in the elaboration of good plastic blood, and hardens the
fibre after it has been laid down. It also act? as a stimulus upon the organs of
sight, and by this means brings about more activity in the various cerebral func
tions." Dr. W. Strange, Senior Physician of the Worcester General Hospital, from

284 Capitalist Production.

broken during the 24 hours, offers very welcome opportunities
of exceeding the limits of the normal working day, e.g., in the
branches of industry already mentioned, which are of an
exceedingly fatiguing nature; the official working day mean?
for each worker usually 12 hours by night or day. But the
over-work beyond this amount is in many cases, to use the
words of the English official report, "truly fearful."1

"It is impossible," the report continues, "for any mind to
realise the amount of work described in the following passages
as being performed by boys of from 9 to 12 years of age ....
without coming irresistibly to the conclusion that such abuses
of the power of parents and of employers can no • longer be
allowed to exist."3

"The practice of boys working at all by day and night
turns either in the usual course of things, or at pressing times,
seems inevitably to open the door to their not unfrequently
working unduly long hours. These hours are, indeed, in some
cases, not only cruelly but even incredibly long for children.
Amongst a number of boys it will, of course, not unfrequently
happen that one or more are from some cause absent When
this happens, their place is made up by one or more boys,
who work in the other turn. That this is a well understood
system is plain . . . from the answer of the manager of
some large rolling-mills, who, when I asked him how the
place of the boys absent from their turn was made up, *I
daresay, sir, you know that as well as I do,' and admitted, the
fact."'

"At a rolling-mill where the proper hours were from 6 rt.m.
to 5J p.m., a boy worked r»bout four nights every week till
8£ p.m. at least . . . and this for six months. Another, at 9
years old, sometimes made three 12-hour shifts running, and,

whose work on "Health" (1864) this passage is taken, writes in a letter to Mr.
White, one of the commissioners: "I Iiave had opportunities formerly, when in
Lancashire, of observing the effects of night-work upon children, and I have no
hesitation in saying, contrary to what some employers were fond of asserting, thpse
children who were subjected to it soon suffered in their health." (1. c. 284, p. 65.)
That such a question should furnish the material of serious controversy, showi
plainly how capitalist production acts on the brain-functions of capitalists and th*»«
retainers.

*L C. 57, p. xii. «L C. Fourth Report (1865), 58, p. xii. • 1. •

The Working Day. 285

when 10, lias made two days and two nights running." A
third, "now 10 ... worked from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m. three
nights, and till 9 p.m. the other nights." "Another, now 13,
. . . worked from 6 p.m. till 12 noon next day, for a week
together, and sometimes for three shifts together, e.g., from
Monday morning till Tuesday night." "Another, now 12, has
worked in an iron foundry at Stavely from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m.
for a fortnight on end; could not do it any more." "George
Allinsworth, age 9? came here as cellar-boy last Friday ; next
morning we had to begin at 3, so I stopped here all night.
Live five miles off. Slept on the floor of the furnace, over
head, with an apron under me, and a bit of a jacket over me.
The two other days I have been here at 6 a.m. Aye ! it is hot
in here. Before I came here I was nearly a year at the same
work at some works in the country. Began there, too, at 3 on
Saturday morning — always did, but was very gain [near]
home, and could sleep at home. Other days I began at 6 in the
morning, and gi'en over at 6 or 7 in the evening," &C.1

*1. c,, p. xiiL The degree of culture of these "labour-powers" must naturally b«
such as appears in the following dialogues with one of the commissioners: Jere
miah Haynes, age 12 — "Four times four is 8; 4 fours are 16. A king is him that
I is all ;'. i money and .-. >ld. We have a King (told it is a Queen), they call her
tb^ Princess Alexandria. Told that she married the Queen's son. The Queen's
son -i the T -incess Alexandria. A Princess is a man." William Turner, age 12—
"Don't live in England. Think it is a country, but didn't know before." John
Morris, ago 14 — "Have heard say that God made the world, and that all the people
was drowndcd but one; heard say that one was a little bird." William Smith, age
15 — f'God L*ade man, man made woman." Edward Taylor, age 15 — "Do not know
of London." Henry Matthewman, age 17 — "Had been to chapel, but missed a good
many times lately. One name that they preached about was Jesus Christ, but I
cannot say any ~*' •, and I cannot tell anything about him. He was not killed,
but died likj other people. He was not the same as other people in some ways,
because he was religious in some ways, and others isn't." (1. c. p. xv.) "The
devil is a good person. I don't know where he lives." "Christ was a wicked
man." "This girl spelt God as dog, and did not know the name of the queen."
("Ch. Employment Comm. V. Report, 1866," p. 55, n. 278.) The same system
obtains in the glass and paper works as in the metallurgical, already cited. In the
paper factories, where the paper is made by machinery, night-work is the rule for
all processes, except rag-sorting. In some cases night-work, by relays, is carried
on incessantly through the whole week, usually from Sunday night until midnight
of the following Saturday. Those who are on day-work work 5 days of 12, and 1
day of 18 hours; those on night-work 5 nights of 12, and 1 of 6 hours in each
week. In other cases each set works 24 hours consecutively on alternate days, one
set working 6 hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday to make up the 24 hours. In
other cases an intermediate system prevails, by which all employed on the paper-
making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the week. This system, says
Commissioner tord, "seems to combine all the evils of both the 12 hours* and the 24

Capitalist Production.

Let us now hear how capital itself regards this 24 hours'
system. The extreme forms of the system, its abuse in the
"cruel and incredible" extension of the working day are natur
ally passed over in silence. Capital only speaks of the system
in its "normal" form.

Messrs. Naylor & Vickers, steel manufacturers, who employ
between 600 and 700 persons, among whom only 10 per cent,
are under 18, and of those, only 20 boys under 18 work in
night sets thus express themselves: "The boys do not suffer
from the heat. The temperature is probably from 86° to 90°.
. . . . At the forges and in the rolling-mills the hands
work night and day, in relays, but all the other parts of the
work are day work, i.e., from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. In the forge
the hours are from 12 to 12. Some of the hands always work
in the night, without any alternation of day and night work.

We do not find any difference in the health of those

who work regularly by night and those who work by day, and
probably people can sleep better if they have the same period

of rest than if it is changed About 20 of the boys

under the age of 18 work in the night sets We

could not well do without lads under 18 working by night
The objection would be in the increase in the cost of produc
tion Skilled hands and the heads in every department

are difficult to get, but of the lads we could get any number.

But from the small proportion of boys that we employ

the subject (i.e., of restrictions on night work) is of little im
portance or interest to us."1

Mr. J. Ellis, one of the firm of Messrs. John Brown & Co.,
steel and iron works, employing about 3000 men and boys, part

hours' relays." Children under 18, young persons under 18, and women, work
under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours' system they are obliged, on
account of the non-appearance of those that ought to relieve them, to work a double
turn of 24 hours. The evidence proves that boys and* girls very often work over
time, which, not un frequently, extends to 24 or even 86 hours of uninterrupted
toil. In the continuous and unvarying process of glazing are found girls of 12
who work the whole month 14 hours a day, "without any regular relief or cessation
beyond 2 or, at most, 3 breaks of half-an-hour each for meals." In some mills,
where regular night-work has been entirely given up, over-work goes on to a terri
ble extent, "and that often in the dirtiest, and in the hottest, and in the most
monotonous of the various processes. ** ("Ch. Employment Comm. Report IV.,
1?65," p. xxxviii. and xxxix.) * Fourth Report, &c., 1865, 79. p. xvi.

The Working Day. 287

of whose operations, namely, iron and heavier steel work, goes
on night and day by relays states "that in the heavier steel
work one or two boys are employed to a score or two men."
Their concern employs upwards of 500 boys under 18 of whom
about J or 170 are under the age of 13. With reference to the
proposed alteration of the law, Mr. Ellis says : "I do not think
it would be very objectionable to require that no person under
the age of 18 should work more than 12 hours in the 24. But
we do not think that any line could be drawn over the age of
12, at which boys could be dispensed with for night work. But
we would sooner be prevented from employing boys under the
age of 13, or even so high as 14, at all, than not be allowed to
employ boys that we do have at night. Those boys who
work in the day sets must take their turn in the night sets also,
because the men could not work in the night sets only ; it

would ruin their health We think, however, that

night work in alternate weeks is no harm. (Messrs. Naylor &
Vickers, on the other hand, in conformity with the interest of
their business, considered that periodically changed night-
labour might possibly do more harm than continual night-
labour.) We find the men who do it, as well as the others who

do other work only by day Our objections to not

allowing boys under 18 to work at night, would be on account
of the increase of expense, but this is the only reason. (What
cynical naivete!) We think that the increase would be more
than the trade, with due regard to its being successfully carried
out, could fairly bear. (What mealy-mouthed phraseology!)
Labour is scarce here, and might fall short if there were such
a regulation." (i.e., Ellis Brown & Co. might fall into the fatal
perplexity of being obliged to pay labour-power its full value.)1
The "Cyclops Steel and Iron Works," of Messrs. Cammel &
Co., are conducted on the same large scale as those of the above
mentioned John Brown & Co. The managing director had
handed in his evidence to the Government Commissioner, Mr.
White, in writing. Later he found it convenient to suppress
the MS. when it had been returned to him for revision. Mr=
White, however, has a good memory. He remembered quite

M. c. 80, p. xvi.

288 Capitalist Production.

clearly that for the Messrs. Cyclops the forbidding of the
night-labour of children and young persons "would be im
possible, it would be tantamount to stopping their works," and
yet their business employs little more than 6% of boys under
18, and less than \% under 13.1

On the same subject Mr. E. F. Sanderson, of the firm of
Sanderson, Bros., & Co., steel rolling-mills and forges, Atter-
cliffe, says: "Great difficulty would be caused by preventing
boys under 18 from working at night. The chief would be the
increase of cost from employing men instead of boys. I can
not say what this would be, but probably it would not be
enough to enable the manufacturers to raise the pri.ce of steel,
and consequently it would fall on them, as of course the men
(what queer-headed folk !) would refuse to pay it." Mr. San
derson does not know how much he pays the children, but
"perhaps the younger boys get from 4s. to 5s. a week. . . .
The boys' work is of a kind for which the strength of the boys
is generally ('generally/ of course not always) quite sufficient,
and consequently there Would be no gain in the greater strength
of the men to counterbalance the loss, or it would be only in
the few cases in which the metal is heavy. The men would
not like so well not to have boys under them, as men would be
less obedient. Besides, boys must begin young to learn the
trade. Leaving day work alone open to boys would not answer
this purpose." And why not? Why could not boys learn
their handicraft in the day-time ? Your reason ? "Owing to
the men working days and nights in alternate weeks, the men
would be separated half the time from their boys, and would
lose half the profit which they make from them. The training
which they give to an apprentice is considered as part of the
return for the boys' labour, and thus enables the men to get it
at a cheaper rate. Each man would want half of this profit."
In other words, Messrs. Sanderson would have to pay part of
the wages of the adult men out of their own pockets instead of
by the night work of the boys. Messrs. Sanderson's profit
would thus fall to some extent, and this is the good Sanderson-

> 1. c. 82, p. xvii.

The Working Day. 289

ian reason why boys cannot learn their handicraft in the day.1
In addition to this, it would throw night labour on those who
worked instead of the boys, which they would not be able to
stand. The difficulties in fact would be so great that they
would very likely lead to the giving up of night work al
together, and "as far as the work itself is concerned/' says
E. F. Sanderson, "this would suit as well, but — " But Messrs.
Sanderson have something else to make besides steel. Steel-
making is simply a pretext for surplus-value making. The
smelting furnaces, rolling-mills, &c., the buildings, machinery,
iron, coal, &c. have something more to do than transform them
selves into steel. They are there to absorb surplus-labour, and
naturally absorb more in 2-i hours than in 12. In fact they
give, by grace of God and law, the Sandersons a cheque on the
working time of a certain number of hands for all the 24 hours
of the day, and they lose their character as capital, are there
fore a pure loss for the Sandersons, as soon as their function of
absorbing labour is interrupted. "But then there would be
the loss from so much expensive machinery, lying idle half the
time, and to get through the amount of work which we are able
to do on the present system, we should have to double our
premises and plant, which would double the outlay." But why
should these Sandersons pretend to a privilege not enjoyed by
the other capitalists who only work during the day, and whose
buildings, machinery, raw material, therefore lie "idle" during
the night? E. F. Sanderson answers in the name of all the
Sandersons : "It is true that there is this loss from machinery
lying idle in those manufactories in which work only goes on
by day. But the use of furnaces would involve a further loss
in our case. If they were kept up there would be a waste of
fuel (instead of, as now, a waste of the living substance of the
workers), and if they were not, there would be loss of time in
laying the fires and getting the heat up (whilst the loss of
sleeping time, even to children of 8, is a gain of working
time for the Sanderson tribe), and the furnaces themselves

1 In our reflecting and reasoning age a man is not worth much who cannot give a
good reason for everything, no matter how bad or how crazy. Everything in the
world that has been done wrong ha* been done wrong for the very befit of reason*.
(Hegel, 1. c., p. 249.)

290 Capitalist Production.

would suffer from the changes of temperature." (Whilst those
same furnaces suffer nothing from the day and night changes of
labour.)1

SECTION 5. THE STBUGGLE FOB A NORMAL WORKING DAY.

COMPULSORY LAWS *'OR THE EXTENSION OP THE WORKING
DAY FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE 14:TH TO THE END OF THE
17TH CENTURY.

"What is a working day? What is the length of time
during which capital may consume the labour-power whose
daily value it buys ? How far may the working day be ex
tended beyond the working time necessary for the reproduction
of labour-power itself?" It iia* been seen that to these ques
tions capital replies: the working day contains the full 24
hours, with the deduction of the few hours of repose without
which labour-power absolutely refuses its services again.

J 1. c. 85, p. xvii. To similar tender scruples of the glass manufacturers that
regular meal times for the children are impossible because as a consequence a cer
tain quantity of heat, radiited by the furnaces>, wot i be "a pure loss" or "wasted."
Commissioner White makes answer. His answer is unlike that oT Ur', Senior, &>:.,
and their puny German plagiarists a la Roscher who are touched b; th "rMtinence,"
"self-denial," "saving," of the capitalists in the expenditure of their gold, and by
their Timur-Tamerlanish prodigality of human life! "A certain amount of heat
beyond what is usual at present might also be going to waste, if meal times were
secured in these cases, but it seems likely not equal in money-value to the waste
of animal power now going on in glass-hour js throughout the kingdom from growing
boys not having enough quiet time to e; t their meals at ease, with a little rest
afterwards for digestion." (!• c., p. xlv.) And this in the year of progress 1863!
Without considering the expenditure of strength in lifting and carrying, such a
child, in the sheds where bottle and flint glass are made, walks during the perform
ance of his work 15-20 miles in every 6 hours! And the work often lasts 14 or 15
hours! In many of these glass works, as in the Moscow spinning mills, the system
of 6 hours' relays is in force. "During the working part of the week six hours
is the utmost unbroken period ever attained at any one time for rest, and out >f
this has to come the time spent in coming and going to and from work, washing,
dressing, and meals, leaving a very short period indeed for rest, and none for freih
air and play, unless at the expense of the sleep necessary for young boys, especially
at such hot and fatiguing work. . . . Even the short sleep is obviously liable
to be broken by a boy having to wake himself if it is night, or by the noise, if
it is day." Mr. White gives cases where a boy worked f "! consecutive hours;
others where boys of 12 drudged on until 2 in the morning, and then slept in tie
works till 5 a,m. (3 hours!) only to resume their work. "The amount of work,"
say Tremenheere and Tufnell, who drafted the general report, "done by bo}S,
youths, girls, and women, in the course of their daily or nightly spell of labour, is.
certainly extraordinary." (1. c., xliii. and xliv.) Meanwhile, late by night per
haps, self-denying Mr. Glass-Capital, primed with port-wine, reds out of his dub
•'ard droning out idiotically, "Britons never, never shall be slaves!"

The Working Day. 291

Hence it is self-evident that the labourer is nothing else, his
whole life through, than labour-power, that therefore all his
disposable time is by nature and law labour-time, to be devoted
to the self-expansion of capital. Time for education, for
intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions
and for social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and
mental activity, even the rest time of Sunday (and that in a
country of Sabbatarians I)1 — moonshine ! But in its blind un-
restrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour,
capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely
physical maximum bounds of the working day. It usurps the
time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of
the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of
fresh air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incorpor
ating it where possible with the process of production itself, so
that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of pro
duction, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the
machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the resto
ration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers to just so
many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely
exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal maintenance
of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the
working day ; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of
labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful
it may be, which is to determine the limits of the labourers'
period of repose. Capital cares nothing for the length of life
of labour-power. All that concerns it is simply and solely the
maximum of labour-power, that can be rendered fluent in a

* In England even now occasionally in rural districts a labourer is condemned to
Imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath, by working in his front garden. The
same labourer is punished for breach of contract if he remains away from his
metal, paper, or glass works on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious whim.
The orthodox Parliament will hear nothing of Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in the
process of expanding capital. A memorial (August 1863), in which the London
day-labourers in fish and poultry shops asked for the abolition of Sunday labour,
states that their work lasts for the first 6 days of the week on an average 15 hours
a-day, and on Sunday 8—10 hours. From this same memorial we learn also that
the delicate gourmands among the aristocratic hypocrites of Exeter Hall, especially
encourage this "Sunday labour." These "holy ones," so zealous in cute curanda,
show their Christianity by the humility with which they bear the over-work, th«
privations, and the hanger of others. Obstquium ventrts ittis (.the labourers) per*
tuciosms esi.

292 Capitalist Production.

working day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of
the labourer's life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased pro
duce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.

The capitalistic mode of production (essentially the produc
tion of surplus value, the absorption of surplus-labour), pro
duces thus, with the extension of the working day, not only
the deterioration of human labour-power by robbing it of ita
normal, moral and physical, conditions of development and
function. It produces also the premature exhaustion and
death of this labour-power itself.1 It extends the labourer's
time of production during a given period by shortening hi;?
actual life-time.

But the value of the labour-power includes the value of tho
commodities necessary for the reproduction of the worker, o:-
for the keeping up of the working class. If then the unnatural
extension of the working day, that capital necessarily strive*
after in its unmeasured passion for self-expansion, shorten;]
the length of life of the individual labourer, and therefor tho
duration of his labour-power, the forces used up have to be re
placed at a more rapid rate and the sum of the expenses fo •
the reproduction of labour-power will be greater; just as in u
machine the part of its value to be reproduced every day i;
greater the more rapidly the machine is worn out. It would
seem therefore that the interest of capital itself points in tho
direction of a normal working day.

The slave-owner buys his labourer as he buys his horse. If
he loses his slave, he loses capital that can only be restored
by new outlay in the slave-mart. But "the rice-grounds o:f
Georgia, or the swamps of the Mississippi may be fatally in
jurious to the human constitution; but the waste of human
life which the cultivation of these districts necessitates, is noi
so great that it cannot be repaired from the teeming preserver
of Virginia and Kentucky. Considerations of economy, more
over, which, under a natural system, afford some security for
humane treatment by identifying the master's interest with

*"We have given in our previous report* the statement* of several experience!
manufacturers to the effect that over-hours. . . . certainly tend prematurely tit
exhaust the working power of the men.*' (L c. 64, p. riii.)

The Working Day. 293

the slave's preservation, when once trading in slaves is prac
tised, become reasons for racking to the uttermost the toil of
the slave ; for, when his place can at once be supplied from for
eign preserves, the duration of his life becomes a matter of less
moment than its productiveness while it lasts. It is accord
ingly a maxim of slave management, in slave-importing coun
tries, that the most effective economy is that which takes out
of the human chattel in the shortest space of time the utmost
amount of exertion it is capable of putting forth. It is in
tropical culture, where annual profits often equal the whole
capital of plantations, that negro life is most recklessly sac
rificed. It is the agriculture of the West Indies, which has
been for centuries prolific of fabulous wealth, that has engulfed
millions of the African race. It is in Cuba, at this day, whose
revenues are reckoned by millions, and whose planters are
princes, that we see in the servile class, the coarsest fare, the
most exhausting and unremitting toil, and even the absolute
destruction of a portion of its numbers every year."1

Mutaio nomine de te fabula narratur. For slave-trade
read labour-market, for Kentucky and Virginia, Ireland and
the agricultural districts of England, Scotland, and Wales,
for Africa, Germany. We heard how over-work thinned the
ranks of the bakers in London. Nevertheless the London
labour-market is always over-stocked with German and other
candidates for death in the bakeries. Pottery, as we saw, is
one of the shortest-lived industries. Is there any want there
fore of potters ? Josiah Wedgwood, the inventor of modern
pottery, himself originally a common workman, said in 1785
before the House of Commons that the whole trade employed
from 15,000 to 20,000 people.2 In the year 1861 the popula
tion alone of the town centres of this industry in Great Britain
numbered 101,302. "The cotton trade has existed for ninety
years ..... It has existed for three generations of the English
race, and I believe I may safely say that during that period it
has destroyed nine generations of factory operatives."3

"The Slave Power," p. 110, 111.

•John Ward: "History of the Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent," London, 1843,
. 42.
• Ferrand's Speech in the Hou»e of Commons, 27th April, 1863.

294 Capitalist Production.

No doubt in certain epochs of feverish activity the labour-
market shows significant gaps. In 1834, e.g. But then the
manufacturers proposed to the Poor Law Commissioners that
they should send the "surplus-population" of the agricultural
districts to the north, with the explanation "that the manu
facturers would absorb and use it up."1 "Agents were ap
pointed with the consent of the Poor Law Commissioners. . . .
An office was set up in Manchester, to which lists were sent of
those workpeople in the agricultural districts wanting employ
ment, and their names were registered in books. The manu
facturers attended at these offices, and selected such persons as
they chose; when they had selected such person's as their
'wants required,' they gave instructions to have them for
warded to Manchester, and they were sent, ticketed like bales
of goods, by canals, or with carriers, others tramping on the
road, and many of them were found on the way lost and half-
starved. This system had grown up into a regular trade.
This House will hardly believe it, but I tell them, that this
traffic in human flesh was as wyell kept up, they were in effecl
as regularly sold to these [Manchester] manufacturers as slave*

are sold to the cotton-grower in the United States Ir.

18fiO, 'the cotton trade was at its zenith.' .... The manu
facturers again found that they were short of hands. . . . The}
applied to the 'flesh agents/ as they are called. Those agents
sent to the southern downs of England, to the pastures of Dor
setshire, to the glades of Devonshire, to the people tending
kine in Wiltshire, but they sought in vain. The surplus-
population was 'absorbed.' ' The "Bury Guardian," said, on
the completion of the French treaty, that <;10,000 additional
hands could be absorbed by Lancashire, and that 30,000 or
40,000 will be needed." After the "flesh agents and sub-
agents" had in vain sought through the agricultural districts,
"a deputation came up to London, and waited on the right hor .
gentleman [Mr. Villiers, President of the Poor Law Board]
with a view of obtaining poor children from certain unioa
houses for the mills of Lancashire."2

* "Those were the very words used by the cotton manufacturers," 1. c.

* L c. Mr. Villiers, despite the best of intentions on hig part, was "legall) "

The Working Day. 295

What experience shows to the capitalist generally is a con
stant excess of population, i.e., an excess in relation to the
momentary requirements of surplus-labour-absorbing capital,
although this excess is made up of generations of human beings
stunted, shortrlived, swiftly replacing each other, plucked, so
to say, before maturity.1 And, indeed, experience shows to

obliged to refuse the requests of the manufacturers. These gentlemen, however,
attained their end through the obliging nature of local poor law boards. Mr. A.
Redgrave, Inspector of Factories, asserts that this time the system under which
orphans and pauper children were treated "legally" as apprentices "was not accom
panied with the old abuses" (on these "abuses" see Engels, 1. c.), although in one
case there certainly was "abuse of this system in respect to a number of girls and
young women brought from the agricultural districts of Scotland into Lancashire
end Cheshire." Under this system the manufacturer entered into a contract with
the workhouse authorities for a certain period. He fed, clothed, and lodged the
children, and gave them a small allowance of money. A remark of Mr. Redgrave
to be quoted directly seems strange, especially if we consider that even among the
ye:.. s of prosperity of the English cotton trade, the year 1860 stands unparalleled,
&u I that, besides, wages were exceptionally high. For this extraordinary demand
for work had to contend with the depopulation of Ireland, with unexampled emigra
tion from the English and Scotch agricultural districts to Australia and America,
with an actual diminution of the population in some of the English agricultural
districts, in consequence partly of an actual breakdown of the vital force of the
labourers, partly of the already effected dispersion of the disposable population
through the dealers in human flesh. Despite all this Mr. Redgrave says: "This
kir 1 of labour, however, would only be sought after when none other could be
procured, for it is a high-priced labour. The ordinary wages of a boy of 13 would
"-- a"i '. 4s. per week, but to lodge, to clothe, to feed, and to provide medical
attendance and proper superintendence for 50 or 100 of these boys, and to set
--Uc some remuneration for them, could not be accomplished for 4s. a-head per
wc:'...T' (Report of the Inspector of Factories for 80th April, 1860, p. 27.) Mr.
Redgrave forgets to tell us how the labourer himself can do all this for his chil
dren out of their 4s. a-week wages, when the manufacturer cannot do it for the
60 <. r 100 children lodged, boarded, superintended all together. To guard against
fal:; conclusions from the text, I ought here to remark that the English cotton
industry, since it was placed under the Factory Act of 1850 with its regulations of
labour-time, &c., must be regarded as the model industry of England. The English
cotton operative is in every respect better off than his continental companion in
misery. "The Prussian factory operative labours at least ten hours per week more
then his English competitor, and if employed at his own loom in his own house,
his labour is not restricted to even those additional hours." ("Rep. of Insp. of
Fact.," Oct. 1853, p. 103.) Redgrave, the Factory Inspector mentioned above, after
the Industrial Exhibition in 1851, travelled on the Continent, especially in France
and Germany, for the purpose of inquiring into the conditions of the factories.
Of the Prussian operative he says: "He receives a remuneration sufficient to pro
cure tl.i simple fare, and to supply the slender comforts to which he has been
accustomed. ... he lives upon his coarse fare, and works hard, wherein bis
position is subordinate to that of the English operative." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact.,"
81st Oct., 1853, p. 85.)

*The overworked "die off with strange rapidity; but the places of those who
perish are instantly filled, and a frequent change of persons makes no alteration
in the scene." ("England and America." London, 1833, vol. I, p. 65. By E, G.
Wakefield.)

296 Capitalist Production.

the intelligent observer with what swiftness and grip the
capitalist mode of production, dating, historically speaking,
only from yesterday, has seized the vital power of the people
by the very root — show how the degeneration of the industrial
population is only retarded by the constant absorption of prim
itive and physically uncorrupted elements from the country —
shows how even the country labourers, in spite of fresh air
and the principle of natural selection, that works so power
fully amongst them, and only permits the survival of the
strongest, are already beginning to die off.1 Capital that has
such good reasons for denying the sufferings of the legions of
workers that surround it, is in practice moved as much and as
little by the sight of the coming degradation and final de
population of the human race, as by the probable fall of the
earth into the sun. In every stock-jobbing swindle every one
knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every
one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after
he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in
safety. Apres moi le deluge! is the watchword of every ca]>-
italist and of every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reck-
less of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under
cotflpUlsion from society.* To the outcry as to the physical
ancl mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of
overwork, it answers: Ought these to trouble us since they ir-

1 See "Public Health. Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Counci ,
1863." Published in London 1864. This report deals especially with the agricultun 1
labourers. "Sutherland ... is commonly represented as a highly improve!
county . . . but . . . recent inquiry has discovered that even there, ii
districts once famous for fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have de
generated into a meagre and stunted race. In the healthiest situations, on hill
sides fronting the sea, the faces of their famished children are as pale as the/
could be in the foul atmosphere of a London alley." (W. T. Thornton. "Over
population and its remedy." 1. c., pT 74, 75.) They resemble in fact the SO.OOC
"gallant Highlanders" whom Glasgow pigs together in its wynds and closes, witl
prostitutes and thieves.

1 "But though the health of a population is so important a fact of the national
capital, we are afraid it must be said that the class of employers of labour have not
been the most forward to guard and cherish this treasure. . . . The consider
ation of the health of the operatives was forced upon the millowners. ("Times,"
November 5th, 1861.) "The men of the West Riding became the clothiers of
mankind . . . the health of the workpeople was sacrificed, and the race in a
few generations must have degenerated. But a reaction set in. Lord Shaftes-
bury's Bill limited the hours of children's labour," &c. ("Report of the Registrar-
General," for October, 1861.)

The Working Day. 297

crease our profits ? But looking at things as a whole, all this
does not, indeed, depend on the good or ill will of the in-^s
dividual capitalist. Free competition brings out the inherent/
laws of capitalist production, in the shape of external coercive^ ^ I
laws having power over every individual capitalist.1 /

. The establishment of a normal working day is the result of
centuries ot struggle between capitalist and labourer. The
Tnstory of this struggle shows two opposed tendencies. Cora-
pare, e.g., the English factory legislation of our time with the
English Labour Statutes from the 14th century to well into
the middle of the 18th.2 Whilst the modern Factory Acts
compulsorily shortened the working-day, the earlier statutes
tried to lengthen it by compulsion. Of course the pretensions
of capital in embryo — when, beginning to grow, it secures the
right of absorbing a quantum sufficit of surplus-labour, not
merely by the force of economic relations, but by the help of
the State — appear very modest when put face to face with the
concessions that, growling and struggling, it has to make in its
adult condition. It takes centuries ere the "free" labourer,
thanks to the development of capitalistic production, agrees,
i.e., is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole of his
active life, his very capacity for work, for the price of the
necessaries of life, his birthright for a mess of pottage. Hence
it is natural that the lengthening of the working day, which

*We, therefore, find, e.g., that in the beginning of 1863, 26 firms owning ex
tensive potteries in Staffordshire, amongst others, Josiah Wedgwood, & Sons' peti
tion in a memorial for "some legislative enactment." Competition with other
capitalists permits them no voluntary limitation of working-time for children, &c.
" Much as we deplore the evils before mentioned, it would not be possible to pre
vent them by any scheme of agreement between the manufacturers. . . . Taking
all these points into consideration, we have come to the conviction that some legis
lative enactment is wanted." ("Children's Employment Comm." Rep. 1., 1863, p.
822.) Most recently a much more striking example offers. The rise in the price
of cotton during a period of feverish activity, had induced the manufacturers in
Blackburn to shorten, by mutual consent, the working-time in their mills during a
certain fixed period. This period terminated about the end of November, 1871.
Meanwhile, the wealthier manufacturers, who combined spinning with weaving, used
the diminution of production resulting from this agreement, to extend their own
business and thus to make great profits at the expense of the small employers. The
latter thereupon turned in their extremity to the operatives, urged them earnestly
to agitate for the 9 hours' system, and promised contributions in money to this end.

1 The Labour Statutes, the like of which were enacted at the same time in France,
the Netherlands, and elsewhere, were first formally repealed in England in 181S,
long after the changes in methods of production had rendered them obsolete.

Capitalist Production.

capital from the middle of the 14th to the end of the 17th
century, tries to impose by State-measures on adult labourers,
approximately coincides with the shortening of the working
day which, in the second half of the 19th century, has here and
there been effected by the State to prevent the coining of
children's blood into capital. That which to-day, e.g., in the
State of Massachusetts, until recently the freest State of the
North-American Republic, has been proclaimed as the statutory
limit of the labour of children under 12, was in England, even
in the middle of the 17th century, the normal working-day of
able-bodied artizans, robust labourers, athletic blacksmiths.1

The first "Statute of Labourers" (23 Edward TIL, 1349)
found its immediate pretext (not its cause, for legislation of
this kind lasts centuries after the pretext for it has disap
peared) in the great plague that decimated the people, so that,
as a Tory writer says, "The difficulty of getting men to work
on reasonable terms (i.e., at a price that left their employers
a reasonable quantity of surplus-labour) grew to such a height
as to be quite intolerable."2 Reasonable wages were, there
fore, fixed by law as well as the limits of the working day.
The latter point, the only one that here interests us, is repeated
in the Statute of 1496 (Henry VIII.). The working day for
all artificers and field labourers from March to September
ought, according to this statute (which, however, could not be
enforced), to last from 5 in the morning to between 7 and 8

1 "No child under 12 years of age shall be employed in any manufacturing estab
lishment more than 10 hours in one day." General Statutes of Massachusetts, 63,
ch. 12. (The various Statutes were passed between 1836 and 1858.) "Labour per
formed during a period of 10 hours on any day in all cotton, woollen, silk, paper,
glass, and flax factories, or in manufactories of iron and brass, shall be considered
a legal day's labour. And be it enacted, that hereafter no minor engaged in any
factory shall be holden or required to work more than 10 hours in any day, or
60 hours in any week; and that hereafter no minor shall be admitted as a worker
under the age of 10 years in any factory within this State." State of New Jersey.
An Act to limit the hours of labour, &c., 61 and 62. (Law of llth March, 1855.)
"No minor who has attained the age of 12 years, and is under the age of 15
years, shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment more than 11 hours
in any one day, nor before 5 o'clock in the morning, nor after 7.30 in the evening."
("Revised Statutes of the State of Rhode Island," &c., ch. 39, § 23, 1st July, 1857.)

2 "Sophisms of Free Trade." 7th Ed. London, 1850, p. 205. 9th Ed., p. 253.
This same Tory, moreover, admits that "Acts of Parliament regulating wages, but
against the labourer and in favour of the master, lasted for the long period of
464 years. Population grew. These laws were then found, and really became, un
necessary and burdensome." (1. c., p. 206.)

The Working Day. 299

in the evening. But the meal times consist of 1 hour for
breakfast, 1J hours for dinner, and ^ an hour for "noon-
meate," i.e., exactly twice as much as under the factory acts
now in force.1 In winter, work was to last from 5 in the
morning until dark, with the same intervals. A statute of
Elizabeth of 1562 leaves the length of the working day for all
labourers "hired for daily or weekly wage'7 untouched, but
aims at limiting the intervals to 2J hours in the summer, or
to 2 in the winter. Dinner is only to last 1 hour, and the
"afternoon-sleep of half an hour" is only allowed between the
middle of May and the middle of August For every hour of
absence Id. is to be subtracted from the wage. In practice,
however, -the conditions were much more favourable to the
labourers than in the statute-book. William Petty, the father
of political economy, and to some extent the founder of Sta
tistics, says in a work that he published in the last third of the
17th century: "Labouring-men (then meaning field-labourers)
work 10 hours per diem, and make 20 meals per week, viz., 3
a day for working days, and 2 on Sundays ; whereby it is plain,
that if they could fast on Fryday nights, and dine in one hour
and a half, whereas they take two, from eleven to one ; thereby
this working 2V more> and spending -£$• less, the above-men
tioned (tax) might be raised."2 Was1 not Dr. Andrew Ure
right in crying down the 12 hours' bill of 1833 as a retrogres
sion to the times of the dark ages? It is true, these regula
tions contained in the statute mentioned by Petty, apply also to
apprentices. But the condition of child-labour, even at the
end of the 17th century, is seen from the following complaint:
"'Tis not their practice (in Germany) as with us in this king-

1 In reference to this statute, J. Wade with truth remarks: "From the statement
above (*. e.t with regard to the statute) it appears that in 1496 the diet was con
sidered equivalent to one third of the income of an artificer and one-half the income
of a labourer, which indicates a greater degree of independence among the working
classes than prevails at present; for the board, both of labourers and artificers,
would now be reckoned at a much higher proportion of their wages." (J. Wade,
"History of the Middle and Working Classes," p. 24, 26, and 577.) The opinion
that this difference is due to the difference in the price-relations between food and
clothing then and now is refuted by the most cursory glance at "Chronicon Pre-
tiosum, &c." By Bishop Fleetwood. 1st Ed., London, 1707; 2d Ed, London, 1745.

*W. Petty, "Political Anatomy of Ireland. Verbum Sapienti," 1762, Ed.
p. 10.

300 Capitalist Production.

dom, to bind an apprentice for seven years; three or four is
their common standard : and the reason is, because they are
educated from their cradle to something of employment, which
renders them the more apt to docile, and consequently the more
capable of attaining to a ripeness and quicker proficiency in
business. Whereas our youth, here in England, being bred to
nothing before they come to be apprentices, make a very slow
progress and require much longer time wherein to reach the
perfection of accomplished artists."1

< Still, during the greater part of the 18th century, up to the
epoch of Modern Industry and machinism, capital in England
had not succeeded in seizing for itself, by the payment of the
weekly value of labour-power, the whole week of the labourer
with the exception, however, of the agricultural labourers.
The fact that they could live for a whole week on the wage of
four days, did not appear to the labourers a sufficient reason
that they should work the other two days for the capitalist.
One party of English economists, in the interest of capital, de
nounces this obstinacy in the most violent manner, another

1 "A Discourse on the necessity of encouraging Mechanick Industry," London,
1689, p. 13. Macaulay, who has falsified English history in the interest of the
Whigs and the bourgeoisie, declares as follows: "The practice of setting children
prematurely to work . . . prevailed in the 17th century to an extent which,
when compared with the extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incred
ible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature of six years
old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of that time, and among them some
who were considered as eminently benevolent, mention with exultation the fact
that in that single city, boys and girls of very tender age create wealth exceeding
what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve thousand pounds a year.
The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we
find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new
social evils. . . . That which is new is the intelligence and the humanity which
remedies them." ("History of England," vol. I., p. 419.) Macaulay might have
reported further that "extremely well-disposed" amir du commerce in the 17th
century, narrate with "exultation" how in a poorhouse in Holland a child of four
was employed, and that this example of "vertu mise en pratique" passes muster in
all the humanitarian works, d la Macaulay, to the time of Adam Smith. It is
true that with the substitution of manufacture for handicrafts, traces of the exploi
tation of children begin to appear. This exploitation existed always to a certain
extent among peasants, and was the more developed, the heavier the yoke pressing
on the husbandman. The tendency of capital is there unmistakably; but the facts
themselves are still as isolated as the phenomena of two-headed children. Hence
they were noted "with exultation" as especially worthy of remark and as wonders
by the far-seeing "amir du commerce," and recommended as models for their own
time and for posterity. This same Scotch sycophant and fine talker, Macaulay,
says: "We hear to-day only of retrogression and see only progress." What eyes,
ftad especially what cars!

The Working Day. 301

party defends the labourers. Let us listen, e.g., to the contest
between Postlethwayt whose Dictionary of Trade then had the
same reputation as the kindred works of M'Culloch and
M'Gregor to-day, and the author (already quoted) of the
"Essay on Trade and Commerce."1

Postlethwayt says among other things : "We cannot put an
end to those few observations, without noticing that trite re
mark in the mouth of too many ; that if the industrious poor
can obtain enough to maintain themselves in five days, they
will not work the whole six. Whence they infer the necessity
of even the necessaries of life being made dear by taxes, or any
other means, to compel the working artizan and manufacturer
to labour the whole six days in the week, without ceasing. I
must beg leave to differ in sentiment from those great
politicians, who contend for the perpetual slavery of the work
ing people of this kingdom ; they forget the vulgar adage, all
work and no play. Have not the English boasted of the in
genuity and dexterity of her working artists and manufacturers
which have heretofore given credit and reputation to British
wares in general ? What has this been owing to ? To nothing
more probably than the relaxation of the working people in
their own way. Were they obliged to toil the year round, the
whole six days in the week, in a repetition of the same work,
might it not blunt their ingenuity, and render them stupid in
stead of alert and dexterous ; and might not our workmen lose
their reputation instead of maintaining it by such eternal
slavery ? . . . . And what sort of workmanship could we ex
pect from such hard-driven animals ? . . . . Many of them
will execute as much work in four days as a Frenchman will in

1 Among the accusers of the workpeople, the most angry is the anonymous author
quoted in the text of "An Essay on trade and commerce, containing observations on
Taxation, &c., London, 1770." He had already dealt with this subject in his earlier
work: "Considerations on Taxes." London, 1765. On the same side follows
Polonius Arthur Young, the unutterable statistical prattler. Among the defenders
of the working classes the foremost are: Jacob Vanderlint, in: "Money answers
all things." London, 1734; the Rev. Nathaniel Forster, D.D.; in "An Enquiry into
the Causes of the Present Price of Provisions," London, 1766; Dr. Price, and
especially Postlethwayt, as well in the supplement to his "Universal Dictionary of
Trade and Commerce,", as in his "Great Britain's Commercial Interest explained and
improved." 2nd Edition, 1755. The facts themselves are confirmed by many other
writers of the time, among others by Josiah Tucker.

302 Capitalist Production.

five or six. But if Englishmen are to be eternal drudges, 'tis
to be feared they will degenerate below the Frenchmen. As
our people are famed for bravery in war, do we not say that it
is owing to good English roast beef and pudding in their
bellies, as well as their constitutional spirit of liberty ? And
why may not the superior ingenuity and dexterity of our
artists and manufactures, be owing to that freedom and liberty
to direct themselves in their own way, and I hope we shall
never have them deprived of such privileges and that good
living from whence their ingenuity no less than their courage
may proceed."1 Thereupon the author of the "Essay on Trade
and Commerce" replies: "If the making of every seventh
day an holiday is supposed to be of divine institution, as it
implies the appropriating the other six days to labour" (he
means capital as we shall soon see) "surely it will not be

thought cruel to enforce it That mankind ia

general, are naturally inclined to ease and indolence, we fatally
experience to be true, from the conduct of our manufacturing
populace, who do not labour, upon an average, above four davs

in a week, unless provisions happen to be very dear

Put all the necessaries of the poor under one denomination ;
for instance, call them all wheat, or suppose that .... the
bushel of wheat shall cost five shillings and that he (a manu
facturer) earns a shilling by his labour, he then would ba
obliged to work five days only in a week. If the bushel of
wheat should cost but four shillings, he would be obliged t)
work but four days; but as wages in this kingdom are muei
higher in proportion to the price of necessaries. ... the
manufacturer, who labours four days, has a surplus of money
to live idle with the rest of the week .... I hope [
have said enough to make it appear that the moderate labour
of six days in a week is no slavery. Our labouring people do
this, and to all appearance are the happiest of all our laboui-
ing poor,2 but the Dutch do this in manufactures, and appear
to be a very happy people. The French do so, when holidays

1 Postlethwayt, 1. c., "First Preliminary Discourse," p. 14.

* "An Essay," &c. He himself relates on p. 96 wherein the "happiness" of tie
English agricultural labour already in 1770 consisted. "Their powers are alwaj*
upon the stretch, they cannot live cheaper than they do, nor work harder."

The Working Day. 303

do not intervene.1 But our populace have adopted a notion,
that as Englishmen they enjoy a birthright privilege of being
more free and independent than in any country in Europe.
Now this idea, as far as it may affect the bravery of our troops,
may be of some use ; but the less the manufacturing poor have
of it, certainly the better for themselves and for the State.
The labouring people should never think themselves independ
ent of their superiors It is extremely dangerous to

encourage mobs in a commercial state like ours, where, per
haps, seven parts out of eight of the whole, are people with
little or no property. The cure will not be perfect, till our
manufacturing poor are contented to labour six days for the
same sum which they now earn in four days."2 To this end,
and for "extirpating idleness, debauchery and excess," promot
ing a spirit of industry, "lowering the price of labour in our
manufactories, and easing the lands of the heavy burden of
poor's rates," our "faithful Eckart" of capital proposes this
approved device : to shut up such labourers as become depend
ent on public support, in a word, paupers, in "an ideal work
house" Such ideal workhouse must be made a "House of
Terror," and not an asylum for the poor, "where they are to
be plentifully fed, warmly and decently clothed, and where
they do but little work."3 In this "House of Terror," this
"ideal workhouse, the poor shall work 14 hours in a day,
allowing proper time for meals, in such manner that there shall
remain 12 hours of neat-labour."4

Twelve working hours daily in the Ideal Workhouse, in the
"House of Terror" of 1770'! 63 years later, in 1833, when the
English Parliament reduced the working day for children of
13 to 18, in four branches of industry to 12 full hours, the
judgment day of English Industry had dawned! In 1852,

1 Protestantism, by changing almost all the traditional holidays into workdays,
plays an important part in the genesis of capital.

»"An Essay," &c., p. 16, 41, 96, 87, 55, 67, 69.— Jacob Vanderlint, as early aa
1734, declared that the secret of the out-cry of the capitalists as to the laziness of
the working people was simply that they claimed for the same wages 6 days' labour
instead of 4.

•1. c. p. 242.

4 1. c, "The French," he says, "laugh at our enthusiastic ideas of liberty." L c.
p. 78.

304 Capitalist Production.

•when Louis Bonaparte sought to secure his position with the
bourgeoisie by tampering with the legal working day, the
French people cried out with one voice "the law that limits
the working day to 12 hours is the one good that has remained
to us of the legislation of the Republic I"1. At Zurich the wrork
of children over 10, is limited to 12 hours; in Aargau in 1862,
the work of children between 13 and 16, was reduced from
12^ to 12 hours; in Austria in 1860, for children between 14
and 16, the same reduction was made.2 "What a progress,"
since 1770! Macaulay would shout with exultation!

The "House of Terror" for paupers of which the capitalistic
soul of 1770 only dreamed, was realized a few years later in
the shape of a gigantic "Workhouse" for the industrial worker
himself. It is called the Factory. And the ideal this time
fades before the reality.

SECTION 6. THE STRUGGLE FOB THE NORMAL WORDING DAY.

COMPULSORY LIMITATION BY LAW OF THE WORKING TIME.
THE ENGLISH FACTORY ACTS, 1833 TO 1864.

After capital had taken centuries in extending the working-
day to its normal maximum limit, and then beyond this to the
limit of the natural day of 12 hours,3 there followed on the
birth of machinism and modern industry in the last third of

1 "They especially objected to work beyond the 12 hours per day, because the law
which fixed those hours, is the only good which remains to them of the legislation
of the Republic." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact.," 31st October, 1856, p. 80.) The
French Twelve hours' Bill of September 5th, 1850, a bourgeois edition of the decree
of the Provisional Government of March 2nd, 1848, holds in all workshops without
exceptions. Before this law the working day in France was without definite limit.
It lasted in the factories 14, 15, or more hours. See "Des classes ouvrieres en
France pendant 1'annee 1848. Par M. Blanqui." M. Blanqui the economist, not the
Revolutionist, had been entrusted by the Government with an inquiry into the con
dition of the working class.

1 Belgium is the model bourgeois state in regard to the regulation of the working
day. Lord Howard of Welden, English Plenipotentiary at Brussels, reports to the
Foreign Office, May 12th, 1862 : "M. Rogier, the minister, informed me that
children's labour is limited neither by a general law nor by any local regulations;
that the Government, during the last three years, intended in every session to pro
pose a bill on the subject, but always found an insuperable obstacle in the jealous
opposition to any legislation in contradiction with the principle of perfect freedom of
labour."

1 "It is certainly much to be regretted that any class of persons should toil 18
hours a day, which, including the time for their meals and for going to and re
turning from their work, amounts, in fact, to 14 of the 24 hours. . . . Without

The Working Day. 305

the 18th century, a violent encroachment like that of an
avalanche in its intensity and extent. All bounds of morals
and nature, age and sex, day and night, were broken down.
Even the ideas of day and night, of rustic simplicity in the old
statutes, became so confused that an English judge, as late as
1860, needed a quite Talmudic sagacity to explain "judicially"
what was day and what was night.1 Capital celebrated its
orgies.

As soon as the working class, stunned at first by the noise
and turmoil of the new system of production, recovered, in
some measure, its senses, its resistance began, and first in the
native land of machinism, in England. For 30 years, how
ever, the concessions conquered by the workpeople were purely
nominal. Parliament passed 5 Labour Laws between 1802
and 1833, but was shrewd enough not to vote a penny for their
carrying out, for the requisite officials, &c.2

They remained a dead letter. "The fact is, that prior to the
Act of 1833, young persons and children were worked all night,
all day, or both ad libitum/'3

A normal working day for modern industry only dates from
the Factory Act of 1833, which included cotton, wool, flax, and
silk factories. Nothing is more characteristic of the spirit of

entering into the question of health, no one will hesitate, I think, to admit that, in a
moral point of view, so entire an absorption of the time of the working classes,
without intermission, from the early age of 13, and in trades not subject to restric
tion, much younger, must be extremely prejudicial, and is an evil greatly to be de
plored .... For the sake, therefore, of public morals, of bringing up an orderly
population, and of giving the great body of the people a reasonable enjoyment of
life, it is much to be desired that in all trades some portion of every working day
should be reserved for rest and leisure." (Leonard Homer in Reports of Insp. of
Fact, Dec., 1841.)

1 See "Judgment of Mr. J. H. Otwey, Belfast. Hilary Sessions, County Antrim,
1860."

* It is very characteristic of the regime of Louis Philippe, the bourgeois king, that
the one Factory Act passed during his reign, that of March 22nd, 1841, was never
put in force. And this law only dealt with child-labour. It fixed 8 hours a day for
children between 8 and 12, 12 hours for children between 12 and 16, &c., with many
exceptions which allow night-work even for children 8 years old. The supervision
and enforcement of this law are, in a country where every mouse is under police
administration, left to the good-will of the amis du commerce. Only since 1S53,
in one single department — the Departement du Nord — has a paid government in
spector been appointed. Not less characteristic of the development of French so
ciety, generally, is the fact, that Louis Philippe's law stood solitary among the all*
embracing mass of French laws, till the Revolution of 1848.

• "Report of Injp. of Fact.," 30th April, 1860, p. 50.

306 Capitalist Production.

capital than the history of the English Factory Acts from 1833
to 1864.

The Act of 1833 declares the ordinary factory working day
to be from half-past five in the morning to half-past eight in
the evening, and within these limits, a period of 15 hours, it is
lawful to employ young persons (i.e., persons between 13 and
18 years of age), at any time of the day, provided no one in
dividual young person should work more than 12 hours in any
one day, except in certain cases especially provided for. The
6th section of the Act provided : "That there shall be allowed
in the course of every day not less than one and a half hours for
meals to every such person restricted as hereinbefore pro
vided." The employment of children under 9, with excep
tions mentioned later, was forbidden; the work of children
between 9 and 13 was limited to 8 hours a day, night work,
i.e., according to this Act, work between 8.30 p.m. and 5.30
a.m., was forbidden for all persons between 9 and 18.

The law-makers were so far from wishing to trench on the
freedom of capital to exploit adult labour-power, or, as they
called it, "the freedom of labour," that they created a special
system in order to prevent the Factory Acts from having a
consequence so outrageous.

"The great evil of the factory system as at present con
ducted," says the first report of the Central Board of the Corr-
mission of June 28th, 1833, "has appeared to us to be that it
entails the necessity of continuing the labour of children to
the utmost length of that of the adults. The only remedy for
this evil, short of the limitation of the labour of adults, which
would, in our opinion, create an evil greater than that which is
sought to be remedied, appears to be the plan of working
double sets of children." . . . Under the name of System
of Relays, this "plan" was therefore carried out, so that, e.g.,
from 5.30 a.m. until 1.30 in the afternoon, one set of children
between 9 and 13, and from 1.30 p.m. to 8.30 in the evening
another set were "put to," &c.

In order to reward the manufacturers for having, in tho
most barefaced way, ignored all the Acts as to children's labou *
passed during the last twenty-two years, the bill was yet

The Working Day. 307

further gilded for them. Parliament decreed that after March
1st, 1834, no child under 11, after March 1st, 1835, no child
under 12, and after March 1st, 1836, no child under 13, was to
work more than eight hours in a factory. This "liberalism/'
so full consideration for "capital," was the more noteworthy
as, Dr. Farre, Sir A. Carlisle, Sir B. Brodie, Sir C. Bell, Mr.
Guthrie, &c., in a word, the most distinguished physicians and
surgeons in London, had declared in their evidence before the
House of Commons, that there was danger in delay. Dr.
Farre expressed himself still more coarsely. "Legislation is
necessary for the prevention of death, in any form in which it
can be prematurely inflicted, and certainly this (i.e., the fac
tory method) must be viewed as a most cruel mode of in
flicting it."

That same "reformed" Parliament, which in its delicate
consideration for the manufacturers, condemned children
under 13, for years to come, to 72 hours of work per week in
the Factory Hell, on the other hand, in the Emancipation Act,
which also administered freedom drop by drop, forbade the
planters, from the outset, to work any negro slave more than
45 hours a week.

But in no wise conciliated capital now began a noisy agita
tion that went on for several years. It turned chiefly on the
age of those who, under the name of children, were limited to
8 hours work, and were subject to a certain amount of com
pulsory education. According to capitalistic anthropology, the
age of childhood ended at 10, or at the outside, at 11. The
more nearly the time approached for the coming into full force
of the Factory Act, the fatal year 1836, the more wildly raged
the mob of manufacturers. They managed, in fact, to in
timidate the government to such an extent that in 1835 it pro
posed to lower the limit of the age of childhood from 13 to 12.
In the meantime the pressure from without grew more threat
ening. Courage failed the House of Commons. It refused to
throw children of 13 under the Juggernaut Car of capital for
more than 8 hours a day, and the Act of 1833 came into full
operation. It remained unaltered until June, 1844.

In the ten years during which it regulated factory work,

308 Capitalist Production.

first in part, and then entirely, the official reports of the factory-
inspectors teem with complaints as to the impossibility of
putting the Act into force. As the law of 1833 left it optional
with the lords of capital during the 15 hours, from 5.30 a.m.
to 8.30 p.m., to make every "young person," and "every child"
begin, break off, resume, or end his 12 or 8 hours at any
moment they liked, and also permitted them to assign to differ
ent persons different times for meals, these gentlemen soon
discovered a new "system of relays," by which the labour-
horses were not changed at fixed stations, but were constantly
re-harnessed at changing stations. We do not pause longer on
the beauty of this system, as we shall have to return to it later.
But this much is clear at the first glance : that this system
annulled the whole Factory Act, not only in the spirit, but in
the letter. How could factory inspectors, with this complex
book-keeping in respect to each individual child or young
person, enforce the legally determined work time and the
granting of the legal meal-times ? In a great many of the
factories, the old brutalities soon blossomed out again un
punished. In an interview with the Home Secretary (1844),
the factory inspectors demonstrated the impossibility of any
control under the newly invented relay system.1 In the mean
time, however, circumstances had greatly changed. The fac
tory hands, especially since 1838, had made the Ten Hours'
Bill their economical, as they had made the Charter their
political, election-cry. Some of the manufacturers, even, who
had managed their factories in conformity with the Act of
1833, overwhelmed Parliament with memorials on the im
moral competition of their false brethren whom greater impu
dence, or more fortunate local circumstances, enabled to break
the law. Moreover, however much the individual manufac
turer might give the rein to his old lust for gain, the spokes
men and political leaders of the manufacturing class ordered
a change of front and of speech towards the workpeople. They
had entered upon the contest for the repeal of the Corn Laws,
and needed the workers to help them to victory. They prom
ised, therefore, not only a double-sized loaf of bread, but the

x"R«pt. of Intp. of Fact.," Slit October, 1849, p. 6.

The Working Day. 309

enactment of the Ten Hours' Bill in the Free Trade millen-
ium.1 Thus they still less dared to oppose a measure intended
only to make the law of 1833 a reality. Threatened in their
holiest interest, the rent of land, the Tories thundered with
philanthropic indignation against the "nefarious practices"2
of their foes.

•* This was the origin of the additional Factory Act of June
7th, 1844. It came into effect on September 10th, 1844. It
places under protection a new category of workers, viz., the
women over 18. They were placed in every respect on the
same footing as the young persons, their work time limited to
twelve hours, their night-labour forbidden, &c. For the first
time, legislation saw itself compelled to control directly and
officially the labour of adults. In the Factory Report of 1844-
1845, it is said with irony : "No instances have come to my
knowledge of adult women having expressed any regret at
their rights being thus far interfered with."3 The working
time of children under 13 was reduced to 6£, and in certain
circumstances to 7 hours a-day.4

To get rid of the abuses of the "spurious relay-system," the
law established besides others the following important regula
tions : — "That the hours of work of children and young persons
shall be reckoned from the time when any child or young
person shall begin to work in the morning." So that if A,
e.g., begins work at 8 in the morning, and B at 10, B's work
day must nevertheless end at the same hour as A's. "The
time shall be regulated by a public clock," for example, the
nearest railway clock, by which the factory clock is to be set.
The occupier is to hang up a "legible" printed notice stating
the hours for the beginning and ending of work and the times
allowed for the several meals. Children beginning work be
fore 12 noon may not be again employed after 1 p.m. The
afternoon shift must therefore consist of other children than

*"Rept. of Insp. of Fact," 81st October, 1848, p. 98.

1 Leonard Horner uses the expression "nefarious practices" in his official reports.
("Report of Insp. of Fact.," 31st October, 1859, p. 7.)

»"Rept.," &c., 30th Sept., 1844, p. 16.

* The Act allows children to be employed for 10 hours if they do not work day
•fter day, but only on alternate days. In the main this clause remained inoperative.

3io Capitalist Production.

those employed in the morning. Of the hour and a half for
meal times, "one hour thereof at the least shall be given before
three of the clock in the afternoon. . . . and at the same
period of the day. No child or young person shall be em
ployed more than five hours before 1 p.m. without an interval
for meal time of at least 30 minutes. No child or young per
son [or female] shall be employed or allowed to remain in any
room in which any manufacturing process is then [i.e., at meal
times] carried on/7 &c.

It ha.: been seen that lliccc minutiae, which, with military
uniformity, regulate by stroke of the clock the times, limits,
pauses of the work, were not at all the products of Parlia
mentary fancy. They developed gradually out of circum
stances as natural laws of the modern mode of production.
Their formulation, official recognition, and proclamation by the
State, were the result of a long struggle of classes. One of
tLeir first consequences was that in practice the working day
of the adult males in factories became subject to the came
limitations, since in most processes of production the co-opera
tion of the children, young persons, and women 13 indis
pensable. On the whole, therefore, during the pericJ from
1844 to 1847, the 12 hours' working day became r:neral and
uniform in all branches of industry under the Factory Act

The manufacturers, however, did not allow this "progress"
without a compensating "retrogression." At their instigation
the House of Commons reduced the minimum age for exploit
able children from 9 to 8, in order to assure that additional
supply of factory children which is due to capitalists, accord
ing to divine and human law.1

The years 1846-47 are epoch-making in the economic history
of England. The Repeal of the Corn Laws, and of the duties
on cotton and other raw material ; free trade proclaimed as the
guiding star of legislation ; in a word, the arrival of the mil-
lenium. On the other hand, in the same years, the Chartist
movement and the 10 hours' agitation reached their highest

1 "As a reduction in their hours of work would cause a larger number (of chil-
drtn) to be employed, it was thought that the additional supply of children from 8
to 0 years of age would meet the increased demand" (1. c., p. 13.)

The Working Day. 311

point. They found allies in the Tories panting for revenge.
Despite the fanatical opposition of the army of perjured Free
traders, with Bright and Cobden at their head, the Ten Hours'
Bill, struggled for so long, went through Parliament.

The new Factory Act of June 8th? 1847, enacted that on
July 1st, 1847, there should be a preliminary shortening of the
working day for "young persons" (from 13 to 18), and all
females to 11 hours, but that on May 1st, 1848, there should
be a definite limitation of the working day to 10 hours. In
other respects, the Act only amended and completed the Acts
of 1833 and 1844.

Capital now entered upon a preliminary campaign in order
to hinder the Act from coming into full force on May 1st,
1848. And the workers themselves, under the pretence that
they had been taught by experience, were to help in the destruc
tion of their own work. The moment was cleverly chosen.
"It must be remembered, too, that there has been more than
two years of great suffering (in consequence of the terrible
crisis of 1846-47) among the factory operatives, from many
mills having worked short time, and many being altogether
closed. A considerable number of the operatives must there
fore be in very narrow circumstances ; many, it is to be feared,
in debt ; so that it might fairly have been presumed that at the
present time they would prefer working the longer time, in
order to make up for past losses, perhaps to pay off debts, or
get their furniture out of pawn, or replace that sold, or to get
a new supply of clothes for themselves and their families."1

The manufacturers tried to aggravate the natural effect of
these circumstances by a general reduction of wages by 10%.
This was done, so to say, to celebrate the inauguration of the
new Free Trade era. Then followed a further reduction of
8$% as soon as the working day was shortened to 11, and a
reduction of double that amount as soon as it was finally
shortened to 10 hours. Wherever, therefore, circumstances
allowed it, a reduction of wages of at least 25% took place.2

1 "Rep. of Insp. of Fact.," 81st Oct, 1848, p. 16.

1 "I found that men who had been getting 10s. a week, had had Is. taken off for
a reduction in the rate of 10 per cent, and Is. 6d. off the remaining 9s. for the re-

312 Capitalist Production.

Under such favourably prepared conditions the agitation
among the factory workers for the repeal of the Act of 1847
was begun. Neither lies, bribery, nor threats were spared in
this attempt. But all was in vain. Concerning the half-
dozen petitions in which workpeople were made to complain of
"their oppression by the Act," the petitioners themselves de
clared under oral examination, that their signatures had been
extorted from them. "They felt themselves oppressed, but not
exactly by the Factory Act."1 But if the manufacturers did
not succeed in making the workpeople speak as they wished,
they themselves shrieked all the louder in press and Parliament
in the name of the workpeople. They denounced the Factory
Inspectors as a kind of revolutionary commissioners like thoso
of the French National Convention ruthlessly sacrificing tho
unhappy factory workers to their humanitarian crotchet. Thin
manoeuvre also failed. Factory Inspector Leonard Homer
conducted in his own person, and through his sub-inspectors,
many examinations of witnesses in the factories of Lancashire.
About 70% of the workpeople examined declared in favour
of 10 hours, a much smaller percentage in favour of 11, and ar
altogether insignificant minority for the old 12 hours.2

Another "friendly" dodge was to make the adult males
work 12 to 15 hours, and then to blazon abroad this fact as
the best proof of what the proletariat desired in its heart of
hearts. But the "ruthless" Factory Inspector Leonard Homer
was again to the fore. The majority of the "over-timers"
declared: "They would much prefer working ten hours for
less wages, but that they had no choice; that so many were
out of employment (so many spinners getting very low wages
by having to work as piecers, being unable to do better), that
if they refused to work the longer time, others would im-

duction in time, together 2s. 6d., and notwithstanding this, many of them said they
would rather work 10 hours." 1. c.

1 " 'Though I signed it [the petition], I said at the time I was putting my hand to a
wrong thing.' 'Then why did you put your hand to it?' 'Because I should have
been turned off if I had refused.' Whence it would appear that this petitioner felt
himself 'oppressed,' but not exactly by the Factory Act." 1. c. p. 102.

1 1. c. p. 17, 1. c. In Mr. Horner's district 10,270 adult male labourers were thus
examined in 101 factories. Their evidence is to be found in the appendix to the
Factory Reports for the half-year ending October 1848. These examinations furnish
valuable material in other connexions also.

The Working Day. 313

mediately get their places, so that it was a question with them
of agreeing to work the long time, or of being thrown out of
employment altogether."1

-The preliminary campaign of capital thus came to grief, and
the Ten Hours' Act came into force May 1st, 1848. But mean
while the fiasco of the Chartist party whose leaders were im
prisoned, and whose organisation was dismembered, had shaken
the confidence of the English working class in its own strength.
Soon after this the June insurrections in Paris and its bloody
suppression united, in England as on the Continent, all frac
tions of the ruling classes, landlords and capitalists, stock-
exchange wolves and shop-keepers. Protectionists and Free
traders, government and opposition, priests and free-thinkers,
young whores and old nuns, under the common cry for the sal
vation of Property, Religion, the Family and Society. The
working class was everywhere proclaimed, placed under a ban,
under a virtual law of suspects. The manufacturers had no
need any longer to restrain themselves. They broke out in
open revolt not only against the Ten Hours' Act, but against
the whole of the legislation that since 1833 had aimed at re
stricting in some measure the "free" exploitation of labour-
power. It was a pro-slavery rebellion in miniature, carried on
for over two years with a cynical recklessness, a terrorist
energy all the cheaper because the rebel capitalist risked
nothing except the skin of his "hands."

To understand that which follows we must remember that
the Factory Acts of 1833, 1844, and 1847 were all three in
force so far as the one did not amend the other: that not one
of these limited the working day of tho male worker over 18,
and that since 1833 the 15 hours from 5.80 a.m. to 8.30 p.m.
had remained the legal "day," within the limits of which
at first the 12; and later tl.e 10 hours' labour of young persons
and women had to be performed under the prescribed condi
tions.

The manufacturers began by here and there discharging a

1 1. c. See the evidence collected by Leonard Homer himself, Nos. 69, 70, 71, 72,
92, 93, and that collected by Sub-Inspector A., Nos. 51, 62, 68, 69, 62, 70, of the
Appendix. One manufacturer, too, tells the plain truth. See No. 14, and No.
266, 1. c.

314 Capitalist Production.

part of, in many cases half of, the young persons and women
employed by them, and then, for the adult males, restoring
the almost obsolete night-work. The Ten Hours' Act, they
cried, leaves no other alternative,1

Their second step dealt with the legal pauses for meals,
Let us hear the Factory Inspectors. "Since the restriction of
the hours of work to ten; the factory occupiers maintain,
although they have not yet practically gone the whole length,
that supposing the hours of work to be from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.,
they fulfil the provisions of the statutes by allowing an hour
before 9 a.m. and half-an-hour after 7 p.m. [for meals]. In
some cases they now allow an hour, or half an hour for dinner,
insisting at the same time, that they are not bound to allow
any part of the hour and a half in the course of the factory
working-day."2 The manufacturers maintained therefore that
the scrupulously strict provisions of the Acts of 1844 with
regard to meal times only gave the operatives permission to eat
and drink before coming into, and after leaving the factory —
i.e., at home. And why should not the workpeople eat their
dinner before 9 in the morning? The crown lawyers, how
ever, decided that the prescribed meal times "must be in the
interval during the working hours, and that it will not be
lawful to work for 10 hours continuously, from 9 a.m. to 7
p.m., without any interval/73

After these pleasant demonstrations, Capital preluded its
revolt by a step which agreed with the letter of the law of
1844, and was therefore legal.

The Act of 1844 certainly prohibited the employment after

1 p.m. of such children, from 8 to 13, as had been employed
before noon. But it did not regulate in any way the 6^
hours' work of the children whose work-time began at 12 mid
day or later. Children of 8 might, if they began work at noon,
be employed from 12 to 1, 1 hour ; from 2 to 4 in the afternoon,

2 hours ; from 5 to 8 :30 in the evening, 3£ hours ; in all, the
legal 6^ hours. Or better still. In order to make their work

1 Reports, &c., for 81st October, 1848, p. 183, 184.
* Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1848, p. 47.
•Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1848, p. 180.

The Working Day. 315

coincide with that of the adult male labourers up to 8.30 p.m.,
the manufacturers only had to give them no work till 2 in the
afternoon; they could then keep them in the factory without
intermission till 8.30 in the evening. "And it is now expressly
admitted that the practice exists in England from the desire
of mill-owners to have their machinery at work for more than
10 hours a-day, to keep the children at work with male adults
after all the young persons and women have left, and until
8.30 p.m., if the factory-owners choose."1 Workmen and
factory inspectors protested on hygienic and moral grounds, but
Capital answered:

"My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,
The penalty and forfeit of nay bond."

In fact, according to statistics laid before the House of Com
mons on July 26th, 1850, in spite of all protests, on July 15th,
1850, 3,742 children were subjected to this "practice" in 257
factories.2 Still this was not enough. The lynx eye of
Capital discovered that the Act of 1844 did not allow 5 hours'
work before mid-day without a pause of at least 30 minutes for
refreshment, but prescribed nothing of the kind for work after
mid-day. Therefore, it claimed and obtained the enjoyment
not only of making children of 8 drudge without intermission
from 2 to 8.30 p.m., but also of making them hunger during
that time.

"Ay, his heart,

So says the bond." »

•-This Shylock-clinging to the letter of the law of 1844, so far
as it regulated children's labour, was but to lead up to an open

1 Reports, &c., 1 c., p. 142.

3 Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1850, pp. 5, 6.

8 The nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped
form. In the code which the influence of the slave-owners, shortly before the out
break of the American civil war, imposed on the territory of New Mexico, it is said
that the labourer, in as much as the capitalist has bought his labour-power, "is his
(the capitalist's) money." The same view was current among the Roman patricians.
The money they had advanced to the plebeian debtor had been transformed via the
means of subsistence into the flesh and blood of the debtor. This "flesh and blood"
were, therefore, "their money." Hence, the Shylock-law of the Ten Fables.
Linguet's hypothesis that the patrician creditors from time to time prepared, beyond
the Tiber, banquets of debtors' flesh, may remain as undecided as that of Daum«r
on the Christian Eucharist.

gi6 Capitalist Production.

revolt against the same law^ so far as it regulated the labour of
"young persons and women." It will be remembered that the
abolition of the "false relay system" was the chief aim and
object of that law. The masters began their revolt with the
simple declaration that the sections of the Act of 1844 which
prohibited the ad libitum use of young persons and women in
such short fractions of the day of 15 hours as the employer
chose, were "comparatively harmless" so long as the work-
time was fixed at 12 hours. But under the Ten Hours' Ac",
they were a "grievous hardship."1 They informed the in
spectors in the coolest manner that they should place them
selves above the letter of the law, and re-introduce the old
system on their own account2 They were acting in the inter
ests of the ill-advised operatives themselves, "in order to be
able to pay them higher wages." "This was the only possible
plan by which to maintain, under the Ten Hours' Act, the in
dustrial supremacy of Great Britain." "Perhaps it may be a
little difficult to detect irregularities under the relay system;
but what of that ? Is the great manufacturing interest of this
country to be treated as a secondary matter in order to save
same little trouble to Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors of Fac
tories ?"3

All these shifts naturally were of no avail. The Factory
Inspectors appealed to the Law Courts. But soon such a cloud
of dust in the way of petitions from the masters overwhelmed
the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, that in a circular of
August 5th, 1848, he recommends the inspectors not "to lay
informations against mill-owners for a breach of the letter of
the Act, or for employment of young persons by relays in cases
in which there is no reason to believe that such young persons
have been actually employed for a longer period than that
sanctioned by law." Hereupon, Factory Inspector J. Stuart
allowed the so-called relay system during the 15 hours of the
factory day throughout Scotland, where it soon flourished again
as of old. The English Factory Inspectors, on the other hand,

1 Reports, &c., for SOth April, 1848, p. 28.

'Thus, among others, Philanthropist Ashworth to Leonard Homer, in a disgusting
Quaker letter. (Reports, &c., April, 1849, p. 4.)
•L c-, p. 140.

The Working Day. 317

declared that the Home Secretary had no power dictatorially
to suspend the law, and continued their legal proceedings
against the pro-slavery rebellion.

/But what was the good of summoning the capitalists when
the Courts, in this case the country magistrates — Cobbett's
"Great Unpaid" — acquitted them? In these tribunals, the
masters sat in judgment on themselves. An example. One
Eskrigge, cotton-spinner, of the firm of Kershaw, Leese, &
Co., had laid before the Factory Inspector of his district the
scheme of a relay system intended for his mill. Receiving a
refusal, he at first kept quiet. A few months later, an in
dividual named Robinson^ also a cotton-spinner, and if not his
Man Friday, at all events related to Eskrigge, appeared before
the borough magistrates of Stockport on a charge of introduc
ing the identical plan of relays invented by Eskrigge. Four
Justices sat, among them three cotton-spinners, at their head
this same inevitable Eskrigge. Eskrigge acquitted Robinson,
and now was of opinion that what was right for Robinson was
fair for Eskrigge. Supported by his own legal decision, he in
troduced the system at once into his own factory.1 Of course,
the composition of this tribunal was in itself a violation of the
law.2 These judicial farces, exclaims Inspector Howell,
urgently call for a remedy — either that the law should be so
altered as to be made to conform to these decisions, or that it
should be administered by a less fallible tribunal, whose de
cisions would conform to the law. . . . when these cases are
brought forward. I long for a stipendiary magistrate."3

The Crown lawyers declared the masters' interpretation of
the Act of 1848 absurd. But the Saviours of Society would
not allow themselves to be turned from their purpose. Leonard
Homer reports, "Having endeavoured to enforce the Act . . .
by ten prosecutions in seven magisterial divisions, and having
been supported by the magistrates in one case only. ... I

'Reports, 4c., for 80th April, 1849, pp. 21, 22. Cf. like examples ibid. pp. 4, 5.

•By I. and II. Will. IV., ch. 24, s. 10, known as Sir John Hobhouse's Factory
Act, It was forbidden to any owner of a cotton-spinning or weaving mill, or the
father, son, or brother of such owner, to act »s Justice of the Peace in any in
quiries that concerned the Factory Act

.1 c.

318 Capitalist Production.

considered it useless to prosecute-^niora for this evasion of the
law. That part of the Act o^ 1884\vhich was framed for
securing uniformity in the houT^_^f^work, ... is thus no
longer in force in my district (Lancashire). Neither have the
sub-inspectors or myself any means of satisfying ourselves,
when we inspect a mill working by shifts, that the young per
sons and women are not working more than 10 hours a-day.
. . . In a return of the 30th April, ... of mill-owners work
ing by shifts, the number amounts to 114, and has been for
some time rapidly increasing. In general, the time of work
ing the mill is extended to 134 hours, from 6 a.m. to 7^ p.m.,
... in some instances it amounts to 15 hours, from 5£ a.m.
to 8^ p. m."1 Already, in December, 1848, Leonard Homer
had a list of 65 manufacturers and 29 overlookers who unani
mously declared that no system of supervision could, under thn
relay system, prevent enormous overwork.2 Now, the same
children and young persons were shifted from the spinning-
room to the weaving-room, now, during 15 hours, from ono
factory to another.3 How was it possible to control a system
which, "under the guise of relays, is some one of the many
plans for shuffling 'the hands' about in endless variety, anc
shifting the hours of work and of rest for different individuals
throughout the day, so that you may never have one complete
set of hands working together in the same room at the same
time."4

/ But altogether independently of actual overwork, this so-
called relay-system was an offspring of capitalistic fantasy
such as Fourier, in his humorous sketches of "Courtes
Seances," has never surpassed, except that the "attraction of
labour" was changed into the attraction of capital. Look, for
example, at those schemes of the masters which the "respect
able" press praised as models of "what a reasonable degree of
care and method can accomplish." The personnel of the work
people was sometimes divided into from 12 to 14 categories,
which themselves constantly changed and rechanged their con-

1 Reports, &a, for 30th April, 1849, p. ft.

•Reports, &c,, for 31st October, 1840, p. ft.

•Reports, &c-, for SOtli April, 1849, p. fl.

•Reports, &c* for 1st October, 1848, p. »5.

The Working Day. 319

rfituent parts. During the 15 hours of the factory day, capital
dragged in the labourer now for 30 minutes, now for an hour,
and then pushed him out again, to drag him into the factory
and to thrust him out afresh, hounding him hither and thither,
in scattered shreds of time, without ever losing hold of him
until the full 10 hours' work was done. As on the stage, the
same persons had to appear in turns in the different scenes
of the different acts. But as an actor during the whole course
of the play belongs to the stage, so the operatives, during 15
hours, belonged to the factory, without reckoning the time
for going and coming. Thus the hours of rest were turned
into hours of enforced idleness, which drove the youths to
the pot-house, and the girls to the brothel. At every new
trick that the capitalist, from day to day, hit upon for keep
ing his machinery going 12 or 15 hours without increasing
the number of his hands, the worker had to swallow his meals
now in this fragment of time, now in that. At the time of the
10 hours' agitation, the masters cried out that the working mob
petitioned in the hope of obtaining 12 hours' wages for 10
hours' work. Now they reversed the medal. They paid 10
hours' wages for 12 or 15 hours' lordship over labour-power.1
This was the gist of the matter, this the masters' interpretation
of the 10 hours' law! These were the same unctuous free
traders, perspiring with the love of humanity, who for full 10
years, during the Anti-Corn Law agitation, had preached to
the operatives, by a reckoning of pounds, shillings and pence,
that with free importation of corn, and with the means pos
sessed by English industry, 10 hours' labour would be quite
enough to enrich the capitalist.2 This revolt of capital, after
two years, was at last crowned with victory by a decision of
one of the four highest Courts of Justice in England, the
Court of Exchequer, which in a case brought before it on
February 8th, 1850, decided that the manufacturers were

1 Sec Reports, &c., for 80th April, 1849, p, 6, and the detailed explanation of the
"shifting system," by Factory Inspectors HoweJl and Saunders, in "Reports, &c.t for
81st October, 1848." See also the petition to the Queen from the clergy of Asntou
«nd vicinity, in the spring of 1849, against the "shift system.**

'Cf. for example, "The Factory Question aad the Ten Hours' BilL" By R. H.
Ore* 1*87.

320 Capitalist Production.

certainly acting against the sense of the Act of 1844, but that
this Act itself contained certain words that rendered it mean
ingless. "By this decision, the Ten Hours' Act was abol
ished."1 A crowd of masters, who until then had been afraid
of using the relay-system for young persons and women, now
took it up heart and soul.2

But on this apparently decisive victory of capital, followed
at once a revulsion. The workpeople had hitherto offered a
passive, although inflexible and unremitting resistance. They
now protested in Lancashire and Yorkshire in threatening
meetings. The pretended Ten Hours' Act, was thus simple
humbug, parliamentary cheating, had never existed! The
Factory Inspectors urgently warned the Government that the
antagonism of classes had arrived at an incredible tension.
Some of the masters themselves murmured: "On account of
the contradictory decisions of the magistrates, a condition of
things altogether abnormal and anarchial obtains. One lav/
holds in Yorkshire, another in Lancashire; one law in ono
parish of Lancashire, another in its immediate neighborhood.
The manufacturer in large towns could evade the law, tho
manufacturer in country districts could not find the people
necessary for the relay-system, still less for the shifting oj'
hands from one factory to another," &c. And the first birth
right of capital is equal exploitation of labour-power by all
capitalists.

je Under these circumstances a compromise between masters
and men was effected that received the seal of Parliament in
the additional Factory Act of August 5th, 1850. The work
ing day for "young persons and women," was raised from 10
to 10£ hours for the first five days of the week, and was
shortened to 7J on the Saturday. The work was to go on be
tween 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.,8 with pauses of not less than 1£ hours
for meal-times, these meal-times to be allowed at one and the

1 F. Engels: "The English Ten Hours' Bill." (In the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
Politisch-cekonomische Revue." Edited by K. Marx. April number, 1850, p. 13.)
The same "high" Court of Justice discovered, during the American Civil War, »
verbal ambiguity which exactly reversed the meaning of the law against the arming
of pirate ships.

*Rep., &c., for 30th April, 1850.

• IB winter, from 7 *.m. to 7 p.m. may be rubstituted-

The Working Day. 321

same time for all, and conformably to the conditions of 1844.
By this an end was put to the relay-system once for all.1 For
children's labour, the Act of 1844 remained in force.

One set of masters, this time as before, secured to itself
special seigneurial rights over the children of the proletariat.
These were the silk manufacturers. In 1833 they had howled
out in threatening fashion, "if the liberty of working children
of any age for 10 hours a day were taken away, it would stop
their works."2 It would be impossible for them to buy a suffi
cient number of children over 13. They extorted the privilege
they desired. The pretext was shown on subsequent investiga
tion to be a deliberate lie.3 It did not, however, prevent them,
during 10 years, from spinning silk 10 hours a day out of the
blood of little children who had to be placed upon stools for
the performance of their work.4 The Act of 1844 certainly
"robbed" them of the "liberty" of employing children under
11 longer than 6£ hours a day. But it secured to them, on the
other hand, the privilege of working children between 11 and
13, 10 hours a day, and of annulling in their case the educa
tion made compulsory for all other factory children. This
time the pretext was "the delicate texture of the fabric in
which they were employed, requiring a lightness of touch, only
to be acquired by their early introduction to these factories."5
The children were slaughtered out-and-out for the sake of their
delicate fingers, as in Southern Russia the horned cattle for the
sake of their hide and tallow.' At length, in 1850, the privilege
granted in 1844 was limited to the departments of silk- twist
ing and silk-winding. But here, to make amends to capital
bereft of its "freedom," the work time for children from 11
to 13 was raised from 10 to 10£ hours. Pretext: "Labour in
silk mills was lighter than in mills for other fabrics, and less
likely in other respects also to be prejudicial to health."6
Official medical inquiries proved afterwards that, on the con-

1 "The present law (of 1850) was a compromise whereby the employed surrendered
the benefit of the Ten Hours' Act for the advantage of one uniform period for the
commencement and termination of the labour of those whose labour is restricted."
(Reports, 4c., for 30th April, 1852, p. 14.)

•Reports, ftc., for Sept., 1844, p. 18. »L e, «L c,

•1. c,

•Report* &c., for 81st Oct, 1861, p. M.

322

Capitalist Production.

trary, "the average death-rate is exceedingly high in the silk
districts, and amongst the female part of the population is
higher even than it is in the cotton districts of Lancashire."1
Despite the protests of the Factory Inspector, renewed every
6 months, the mischief continues to this hour.2
<• The Act of 1850 changed the 15 hours' time from 6 a.m. to
8.30 p.m., into the 12 hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. for "young
persons and women" only. It did not, therefore, affect chil
dren who could always be employed for half an hour before
and 2£ hours after this period, provided the whole of their
labour did not exceed 6£ hours. Whilst the bill was under
discussion, the Factory Inspectors laid before Parliament sta
tistics of the infamous abuses due to this anomaly. To no
purpose. In the background lurked the intention of screwing
up, during prosperous years, the working day of adult males

M. c., p. 27. On the whole the working population, subject to the Factory Act,
has greatly improved physically. All medical testimony agrees on this point, and
personal observation at different times has convinced me of it. Nevertheless, and
exclusive of the terrible death-rate of children in the first years of their life, the
official reports of Dr. Greenhow show the unfavourable health condition of the manu
facturing districts as compared with "agricultural districts of normal health." As
evidence, take the following table from his 1861 report: —

Percentage

Death-rate

Percentage

of Adult

from

of Adult

Males en
gaged in

Pulmonary
Affections

Name of District.

Pulmonaiy
Affections

Females
engaged in

Kind of Female
Occupation.

manufac

per 100,000

manufac

tures.

Males.

Females.

tures.

14-9

598

VVigan

644

18-0

Cotton

42-6

708

Blackburn

734

34-9

Do.

37-3

547

Halifax

564

20-4

Worsted

41-9

611

Bradford

603

30-0

Do.

31-0

691

Macclesfield

804

26-0

Silk

14-9

588

Leek

705

17-2

Do.

36-6

721

Stoke-upon-Trent

665

19-3

Earthenware

30-4

726

Woolstanton

727

13-9

Do.

Eight healthy agri

305

cultural districts

340

* It is well-known with what reluctance the English "free traders" gave up the
protective duty on the silk manufacture. Instead of the protection against French
importation, the absence of protection to English factory children now serves their
turn.

The Working Day. 323

to 15 hours by the aid of the children. The experience of the
three following years showed that such an attempt must come
to grief against the resistance of the adult male operatives.
The Act of 1850 was therefore finally completed in 1853 by
forbidding the "employment of children in the morning be
fore and in the evening after young persons and women."
Henceforth with a few exceptions the Factory Act of 1850
regulated the working day of all workers in the branches of
industry that come under it.1 Since the passing of the first
Factory Act half a century had elapsed.2

Factory legislation for the first time went beyond its original
sphere in the "Printworks' Acts of 1845." The displeasure
with which capital received this new "extravagance" speaks
through every line of the Act. It limits the working day for
children from 8 to 13, and for women to 16 hours, between
6 a.m. and 10 p.m., without any legal pause for meal times.
It allows males over 13 to be worked at will day and night.3
It is a Parliamentary abortion.4

However, the principle had triumphed with its victory in
those great branches of industry which form the most char
acteristic creation of the modern mode of production. Their
wonderful development from 1853 to 1860, hand-in-hand with
the physical and moral regeneration of the factory workers,

1 During 1859 and 1860, the zenith years of the English cotton industry, some
manufacturers tried, by the decoy bait of higher wages for over-time, to reconcile
the adult male operatives to an extension of the working day. The hand-mule spin
ners and self-actor minders put an end to the experiment by a petition to their
employers in which they say, "Plainly speaking, our lives are to us a burthen; and,
while we are confined to the mills nearly two days a wetk mart than the other
operatives of the country, we feel like helots in the land, and that we are perpetu
ating a system injurious to ourselves and future generations. . . . This, there
fore, is to give you most respectful notice that when we commence work again after
the Christmas and New Years' holidays, we shall work 60 hours per week, and no
more, or from six to six, with one hour and a half out." (Reports, Ac., for SOth
April, 1860, p. 80.)

•On the means that the wording of this Act afforded for its violation cf. the
Parliamentary Return "Factory Regulations Act" (6th August, 1859), and in it
Leonard Homer's "Suggestions for amending the Factory Acts to enable the Inspec
tors to prevent illegal working, now become very prevalent."

' "Children of the age of 8 years and upwards, have, indeed, been employed from
6 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the last half year in my district." (Reports, &c., for 31st
October, 1867, p. 39.)

* "The Printworks' Act is admitted to be a failure, both with reference to it*
educational and protective provisions." (Reports, 4c., for Slst October, 1868, p. 58.)

324 Capitalist Production.

struck the most purblind. The masters from whom the legal
limitation and regulation had been wrung step by step after a
civil war of half a century, themselves referred ostentatiously
to the contrast with the branches of exploitation still "free."1
The Pharisees of "political economy" now proclaimed the dis
cernment of the necessity of a legally fixed working day as a
characteristic new discovery rf their "science."2 It will be
easily understood that after the factory magnates had resigned
themselves and become reconciled to the inevitable, the pow«?r
of resistance of capital gradually weakened, whilst at the same
time the power of attack of the working class grew with the
number of its allies in the classes of society not immediately
interested in the question. Hence the comparatively rap d
advance since 1860.

The dye-works and bleach-works all came under the Factory
Act of 1850 in 1860 ;3 lace and stocking manufacturers in
1861.

In consequence of the first report of the Commission on the
employment of children (1863), the same fate was shared by
the manufacturers of all earthenwares (not merely pottery),
lucifer-matches, percussion-caps, cartridges, carpets, fustian-

lThus, e.g., E. Potter in a letter to the "Times" of March 24th, 1863. Th«
"Times" reminded him of the manufacturers' revolt against the Ten Hours' Bill.

•Thus, among others, Mr. W. Newmarch, collaborator and editor of Tooke's "His
tory of Prices." Is it a scientific advance to make cowardly concessions to put lie
opinion?

• The Act passed in 1860, determined that, In regard to dye and bleach-works, the
working day should be fixed on August 1st, 1861, provisionally at 12 hours, and
definitely on August 1st, 1862, at 10 hours, i.e.t at 10 1/3 hours for ordinary days, and
7}^ for Saturday. Now, when the fatal year, 1862, came, the old farce was repeated.
Besides, the manufacturers petitioned Parliament to allow the employment of young
persons and women for 12 hours during one year longer. "In the existing condition
of the trade (the time of the cotton famine), It was greatly to the advantage of ih«
operatives to work 12 hours per day, and make wages when they could." A bill to
this effect had been brought in, "and it was mainly due to the action of the operat ve
bleachers Jn Scotland that .':e bill was abandoned." (Reports, &c., for 31st October,
1862, p. 14-15.) Thus lefeatjd by the very work-people, in whose name it pre
tended to speak, Capital Discovered, with the help of lawyer spectacles, that the Act
-)f 1860, drawn up, like all the Acts of Parliament for the "protection of labou%"
/n equivocal phrases, gave them a pretext to exclude from its working the calender ?r»
and finishers. English jurisprudence, ever the faithful servant of capital, sanctiored
in the Court of Common Pleas this piece of pettifogging. "The operatives hfve
been greatly disappointed . . . they have complained of overwork, and it is
greatly to be regretted that the clear intention of the legislature should have f si ed
by reason of a faulty definition." (L c., p. 18.)

The Working Day. 325

catting, and maay prot-erfses included under the name of
"finishing." In the year 1863 bleaching in the open air1 and
baking were placed under special Acts, by which, in the
former, the labour of young persons and women during the
night-time (from 8 in the evening to 6 in the morning), and in
the latter, the employment of journeymen bakers under 18,
between 9 in the evening and 5 in the morning were forbidden.
We shall return to the later proposals of the same Commission,
which threatened to deprive of their "freedom" all the import
ant branches of English Industry, with the exception of agri
culture, mines, and the means of transport.2

1 The "open-air bleachers" had evaded the law of 1860, by me«ina of the lie that no
women worked at it in the night. The lie was exposed by the Factory Inspectors,
and at the same time Parliament was, by petitions t'rom the operatives, bereft »f
its notions as to the cool meadow-fragrance, in which bleaching in the open-air wa
reported to take place. In this aerial bleaching, drying-rooms were used at tempera
tures of from 90° to 100° Fahrenheit, in which the work was done for the moat ;jart
by ^irls. "Cooling" is the technical expression for their occasional escape fiom the
drying-rooms into the fresh air. "Fifteen girls in stoves. Heat from 80° to 90° for
linens, and 100' and upwards for cambrics. Twelve Jrls ironing and doing up
in a smr.ll room about 10 f :et square, in the centre of which is a close stove. The
girls stand r>und the stove, which throws out a terrific heat, and dries the cambrics
rapidly for the ironers. The hours

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Capital; a critique of political economy"

See other formats